The Price of Living
by LovelyWeather
Summary: Knowledge of the future is not the safest thing to possess, she learned...
1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

**Mors liberatrix**

* * *

"You are lying," the voice was barely a whisper, yet it sliced the silence that followed the man's declaration.

Dark figures remained mute, observing a small form in between them amusedly. The man in question didn't even bother to answer the girl's accusations. He knew, as well as all of them did, that she herself did not believe in her own words. He merely chuckled in sick humour as he watched the young woman's petite body tremble _deliciously._

"You… are **lying**," the girl repeated louder this time, digging her short nails into the stone of the statue. Long, dirty strands of hair shadowed her face, concealing her bemused eyes.

She reeked of mud and gore.

One of her shaky hands lifted from the rock and went to cover her lips, nails bloody from scratching. She was resisting the urge to vomit.

"Hey, I reeeally don't think the lady looks good," an obscenely loud childlike voice exclaimed, adversely cheerful in the gloomy darkness of the cave, "I'll take care of the pretty lady, because Tobi is a good-"

"For fuck's sake, would you just shut your goddamned mouth already? I swear to Jashin-sama if I don't kick your rainbow-ass one day-" another figure started yelling obscenities, of which the girl seemed completely unaware. The entertaining dialogue that took place as other voices joined in on the argument fell on death ears, for girl was consumed with bone-chilling thoughts.

He's lying...

_(but you know he is not.)_

It's impossible...

_(you've expected it from the very beginning.)_

Everything. _Everything_ is gone...

_(they are ALL gone.)_

I have lost purpose...

_(you__ ha__ve never even __**had**_ _one.)_

The last morbid thought hit home and she felt all the despair, helplessness and loneliness she had suppressed for _so darn long_ drown her in another wave of nausea. Memories she'd have preferred to forget plagued her mind in a cacophony of words, laughs, mockeries.

_(it was all meaningless)_

_"I'm just... so cold…"_

_(you've lost it all)_

"_So naive…"_

_(so why struggle?)_

_"Pathetic…"_

_(why will you live now?)_

"_Worthless…"_

**(**_**what. ever. for?)**_

The girl felt as if scales have been lifted from her eyes. She was free of duty. Free of pretense.

She _refused_ to submit anymore. No, there was nothing in the game for her now. Nothing to lose, nothing to gain. And if the dark was all that had ever been meant for her then, by all means, she would make sure it was she _herself_ who chose it.

All threats came to a halt when laughter echoed off the wet walls of the cavern. Multiple pairs of eyes, each as monstrous and deadly as the next, regarded the slim figure as it started to rise to its feet. Picking herself up, the girl laughed dryly, like to a stupid, humorless joke only she knew, rid of any real emotion that might have been behind it.

Laughing long and hard.

"The bitch is fuckin' crazy," uttered someone.

Her laughter grew harder, rising almost hysterically, and she stood up, gracefully, elegantly, in a comical contrast to her bloody, shattered clothes.

"What," ringed eyes flashed in the darkness, "do you find so funny, girl?" Under the seemingly aloof tone of his voice shone such _challenge_ that a few silhouettes flickered uncomfortably. Yet, to their utter surprise, the young woman gave him no heed as she intently straightened her clothes…

"Maybe she didn't hear you," the masked one pouted, "Tobi thinks the pretty lady doesn't like us-"

"Why," a sugary voice cut him off, drawling almost triumphantly, "are you so _eager_ to play a fool-" The girl had raised her head; chin high tauntingly, green eyes glittering with expectance.

"tell us then..._ U – chi- ha Ma – da – ra_ ?"

The words oozed down her tongue, each syllable dripping like bitter honey.

The masked man stopped, straightening ever so slightly.

Turned to her.

_Come on now. Do it._

The unfortunate girl knew what to expect before her gaze even fixed on the single black hole of his mask. There was a glint of a malevolent onyx eye. Cold. Sharp.

Flash of crimson red.

And then…

. . .

oblivion.

* * *

**Translation: Mors liberatrix- Death the liberator.**

**A/N (edited): ****Dramatic enough for you to linger for a little while? But t****his is not the beginning of the story. In fact, it is the end**… **well, sort of… The story truly begins in the next chapter. If you liked it, read on. But a piece of warning to all who venture further?**

**This is not a happy story.**

**This is not a fanfic written for the pleasure of seeing already-ill-reputed OCs throwing tea-parties with the characters and finding true love. This story is not about me proving that my characters are unique/special/different than the others out there, or even getting into the whole 'Mary-Sue debate', so please leave it out of it. Also, if you're here expecting the OCs to be playing 'matchmaker' with canon characters, I suggest you turn back now. Just... no.**

**True love and true happiness are abstract concepts in this story, because the OC is trying _nothing_ but to survive in a completely different reality, with all its highly negative aspects as well as those positive. This is not out of pure sadism- I promise this story actually has a certain point to make...**

**First, an apology: I first started writing this story when I was new to writing, writing in English, fanfiction as a whole, and not even properly sixteen years old, so as for the first several chapters I will say outright that it is not up-to-standards. Please bear with me. I considered editing all the beginner mistakes and clichéd dialogue, but have decided to leave it as it is. It is inspiring, to me as its author, to go back to my old writing and remind myself that I should always keep improving.**

**'The Price of Living' is written in the as-realistic-as-I-could-get-away-with way (meaning: without having the OCs killed off instantly, of course, allowing the realism to stray for the benefit of actually having a plot). This story is going to a long, looong walk, written from _one_ OC's point of view (hint: which means that what the OC doesn't see or know, you won't see or know), with a slow, slow build-up, but I sincerely hope that this (and my already-too-long rambling) won't put you off.**

**Constructive criticism is more than welcome, of course. I hope you'll be tolerant to any and all grammar/spelling mistakes in this and the future chapters: English is not my mother tongue. Enough from me now- enjoy. :)  
**


	2. Ab initio

**Chapter one:**

**Ab initio**

**A/N: Yup, this is also short, but that's because at first this and the next chapter were meant as a single one. Thank you all for your encouraging reviews! *loads your pockets with cookies* ^.^  
**

* * *

Turquoise clouded her vision, enveloping her whole in its-

_(No.)_

_… azure? sapphire?_

_(Not likely.)_

"_Darn,"_ she blinked slowly through half-lidded eyes. The blueness was hurting, the burning sensation forbidding her to fully open her eyes and examine her blurry surroundings.

_"Well,_" she shook her head, disposing of her previous trail of thoughts, "_Never had an eye for colors… bluish, greenish, or whatnot…"_

(_Not the kind of a person to observe the world in a black and white manner, but the kind to lack a proper appreciation for them- she was criticized)_

"_This must be a dream,"_ reasoning with herself, "_Not a very descriptive one, kinda wacky, but a dream nonetheless… I think… "_

Only in her dreams did she feel this light, this _weightless_. Strangely, it felt unpleasant and alien, and not completely _unreal _as a dream should have.

Something was off.

She could feel it… in her eyes, her lungs, in the unnatural, lazy way her limbs were lying beside her… The bluish (_she decided)_ mass around her was cut with streaks of gold and she felt it softly circulating, massaging her scalp, carelessly throwing locks of her long (_ridiculously long Kate often claimed) _hair to her face. Her head lolled from side to side gently and without her will… so gently it could only be described as freakish.

She didn't get it. She clearly remembered the ground beneath her cracking just moments ago, pulling the street in, only to have the gruff noise almost instantly replaced with this odd buzzing one. But the scary part was…

…_zzzzzz__…_

…it didn't go away.

Heck, it wasn't even repetitive, just a long monotonous note. Terribly boring. It vaguely reminded her of the old enamel kettle her mother used to make tea in. She greeted another alarming stab in her chest with a reminiscing smile.

_"Yeah,"_ her smirk fell a little because of a sudden unexplainable urge to cough _(Why?)_, _"Mom used to explain 'useful' things like that to me… through stories... how the water turns into steam and, under pressure, spurts through the tiny hole… screaming to__ find its fr__eedom."_

Now she found it ridiculous how her mom's 'tales' for an eight-year-old were told through basic physics; things she hadn't cared to comprehend.

_"Wait."_

Rewind.

_"That sound. Pressure?"_ her mind puzzled over that thought.

_(Maybe her lungs are screaming?)_

Unable to think about the screeching blue haze she was so mindlessly staring at, she averted her gaze _(eyes almost closed, almost non-seeing) _ to her hands. Her pale skin was getting darker, shadier, and the world around her was getting black, too black… The pressure in her ears was so heavy she thought she would go deaf _(does it even work that way?). _She was being pulled into the darkness, deeper, faster, yet deeper again…

She didn't care.

She was so confused…

_"I'm floating,"_ the thought lazily registered in her mind, _"Which must mean the blue thingamabob is water."_

...from that point, her brain started to pick up fast, systematically trying to solve pieces of puzzle she had registered so far.

_"Which means this pressure is getting higher… and light can't reach me anymore…"_

Sudden realization shook her whole body to the core.

_"It's like: sinking."_

. . .

Panic.

The violent emotion caused her eyes to fly wide open again. All at once adrenaline pumped into her muscles, widening her irises, rushing waves of energy through her body. Her heart bumped loudly in her chest and head and-

_"I am… I am… Am I drowning_?_!_"

* * *

Her hurting eyes darted everywhere, disoriented, in a desperate try to pinpoint a fading source of light.

_"I… I have to get out of here! I have to-"_

_"Air!"_ she clutched her ribcage as sudden pain pierced her lungs in a fierce need.

_"Up?… down?… left?… right?… Where? Where am I supposed to go?"_

As far as she could see _(which isn't much at all, a wicked voice reminded her) _the endless blue rushed in dark lazy currents.

_"Where?"_

_"What should I do?"_

_"I'm going to die here!"_

Her mind was a blabbering mass of undone thoughts.

Shrieking and planning an escape appeared wasn't a winning combination. Daring to take a quick glance beneath her, she expected to see an obscure abyss, about to swallow her. However, what she saw troubled even more her already perplexed mind.

_"Light? Down there? But… that would mean…"_

Fidgeting and slamming her arms through water, she managed to clumsily maneuver her body into a back flip.

"_I was sinking backwards, with my head down!" _only then did she feel the sharp sting of pain in her neck, _"Jesus, if I had tried to swim to what I was assuming was 'up', I would have had sank myself even further!"_

Relief raced through her nerves, smoothing her tense muscles. With a new-found strength, the girl desperately pushed herself towards the light, seeking air, sun, seeking life.

_"I'm going to make it. I have to make it!"_ she repeated over and over again, like a mantra.

_(She was often criticized to be either a silly optimist or a determined fool. Needless to say, she argued both.)_

But her salvation was far, too far away. Her lungs were starting to fill up with water and her legs betrayed her. Her thin arms fought to keep her body from falling again as she pushed, swam, practically **dr****agged** herself. The screeching in her ears was obnoxious. The blue's gentle embrace now squeezed her to death, trying to draw her in, twisting itself around her body tightly. In a moment of pure fright, she imagined transparent hands grabbing at her throat and clawing it ruthlessly in opposite to their earlier false gentleness. Her limbs were getting heavier with each struggling jerk and she fought with her will lonely not to open her mouth and inhale gallons of water.

_"Just a little bit more,"_ she pleaded her body, _"You are almost there, come on."_

Three meters…

_"Come on, dammit!"_

Two…

_"Please…"_

One…

A sudden ache in her left arm immediately halted her actions. Pricking. Ripping her muscles. Her face twisted into a painful grimace.

_"Not now… So close… I said, not now!"_ Her intensities howled at her in unison. In the next moment, energy drained from her body just as quickly as it had come and she was left to the current to drag her down to its blue graveyard_._

Light softly caressed her face from the above, tantalizing, **mocking** her … There, where she could see it, but not grasp it. The stinging in her eyes was getting unbearable and she closed them tightly, obediently, and found comfort in the shady black of her inner eyelids. In one moment she thought she heard a distant splash somewhere and she could swear she heard someone yelling as well, the voice strangely inhuman as her ears registered it through veils of liquid.

Hope. Her subsiding heart trashed loudly, as if to call for help. _Here. I'm over here._

Her lips soundlessly formed the words, mute, and she felt weak, so weak it disgusted her. A shadow fell over her and something long and scraggy yanked her. Up, up from this world, to the one of life. The sounds were just a distant echo in her ears and the pain in her arm dulled, leaving her skin itching.

_"I hate blue." _

The statement itself was plain ridiculous. Still, it was the last thought her mind produced as it slipped into comforting unconsciousness.

"_Really… I seriously __**hate**_ _the bloody blue…"_

* * *

**A/N: Translation: Ab initio- From the very beginning (commonly used in literature to indicate a story that's retold from the beginning in contrast to 'in medias res').**

**Background color: Blue- the color of the Throat Chakra. It is connected with speech and hearing, and encourages communication.** **In the so called 'language of colours' it also symbolizes peace, harmony, confidence, security ****and trust.**

**Feel free to leave a review! ^_^**

violent emotion caused her eyes to fly wide open again.


	3. Omne principium grave

**Chapter two:**

**Omne principium grave**

**A/N: I'm so glad that people are actually giving this story a chance! It's my first time posting anything… so yeah... I just have to warn you about one thing: I know that this isn't an original idea, and not even a very original beginning, but that is kinda the whole point. I wanted to take the most clichéd plot and turn it into something extraordinary, little by little, by gradually developing the story,and by getting it as realistic as I can without killing off the OC at the very beginning (which would be, come to think of it, the most realistic outcome of any world-transfer, you'll agree...) All I can ask of you is to have patience and a bit of trust.  
**

**So... here we go: the second chapter. Enjoy, darlings! I'm updating every Friday, just so you know. **

* * *

Water spurted from her mouth and sprinkled down her chin in gushes. She coughed violently and felt that she was being lifted into a sitting position. The next thing she knew, a hand was hitting her between the shoulder-blades and it did a pretty good job in helping her cough her _freaking lungs_ _out _for a few agonizing minutes. The girl couldn't see, couldn't breathe, and she fell forward, landing roughly on her knees in failure to keep her balance.

Little black spots still trembled in her peripheral vision, but she pushed herself up from her bent position, and took a long, grateful breath of welcoming air.

"Thank Heavens, Liz! I was, like, so scared! I totally thought you were going to drown!" a high-pitched voice squealed into her still delicate ears from behind and she reflexively edged away from the source of her discomfort. Much to her chagrin, the voice continued to pursue and ring and rant and-

"—and I was all like: OMG! and I thought I was too late, but I remembered my medic class, so I started to press on your chest to get the water out, and I panicked when I realized you're still out cold so I-"

Elisa blinked rapidly several times to keep the droplets out of her eyes for good and concentrated on the opaque contour in front of her. When her vision finally cleared and the haze in her mind subdued, she recognized the dark-skinned girl, whose hands were flying through the air in frantic gestures, as Sandy, her neighbor and her little sister's best friend.

"—it was really disgusting**,** ya know, 'cause it also spilled outta your nose, which was totally nasty by the way, and THE HELL, LIZ, why didn't you swim?" the hyperactive thirteen-year-old finished and threw her hands once more into the air for dramatic effect.

. . .

"Wha?" was the intelligent answer from the senior girl as she gazed at the other girl in apparent stupor.

"I _said_, why in the world you didn't swim? I saw you, Liz, and you were just floating there like some... spooky… fairy! What WERE you thinking?" Sandy started to squeeze the water out of her midnight-black hair with an irritated pout on her lips. Only in that moment did Elisa notice how the other girl was heavily panting. _Maybe it's from talking so damn much, _the wicked part of her commented before she inwardly chided herself for such a thought_._

Calming herself down, she took a mouthful of warm air.

"Sandy," she began slowly, "Was it you… who pulled me out of the water?"

The younger girl rolled her eyes. "Well, DUH, who do you think?"

Elisa gaped at her, speechless. Did she just need to be saved by a thirteen-year-old girl from drowning? The thought made her feel slightly embarrassed...

"…anyway, I did swim," she defended sourly, folding her arms in front of herself in a protective manner, "I… I just felt this terrible pain in my left arm and, suddenly, I was completely paralyzed! I don't know what happened…"

The dark-haired girl grabbed her arm non-too-gently for closer inspection. She stared at it for a moment or two. "Hmmm... Must've been a cramp," Sandy commented off-handedly as she let go, "But that's not what I'm saying. Why did it take you so long to start swimming?"

_A cramp? ... a__** cramp?**_ _I almost __**died**_ _because of something as simple as a cramp? _Elisa could feel herself shrinking with each newborn thought. Never had she felt so frail as she did in that moment.

"It's because... it's because I was... thinking," the sixteen-year-old admitted reluctantly and even to her ears it sounded nutty.

The other girl stared.

"You were drowning… and you stopped to_ think_ about it? Man, Liz, I really have no idea why my Mom's always telling me to be more like you. You're a real wacko, y'know that," Sandy stated in the end, flabbergasted.

"Alexandra, it's not like that! It's just that… it was all too sudden! It... doesn't make any sense. It was an earthquake for crying out loud! How in the world did we fall through the ground and end up in a river, or lake, or wherever the hell we are!" the long-haired girl spoke up and coughed violently on the last word. God, her chest burned!

"You think too much," wisely observed Sandy, or also entitled as Alexandra, "And who knows? When I went in for you, I swear I totally saw a car!"

. . .

"… a car?" the nearly-drowned girl inquired slowly.

"Hey, don't look at me like I'm crazy!" the younger girl exclaimed, "Nothing makes sense to me either, but at least I'm-"

"Wait! Wait. Let's go from the beginning. I was going to the store to buy some bread," Elisa remembered out loud, intent on clearing as much as she could, "As I was going around the corner I saw you. You-"

"I was going to your house to meet up with Kate. So we said our 'Hellos' and suddenly-"

"I felt the earth cracking beneath my feet and I started to fall flat on my face-!"

"But I didn't! I opened my eyes and saw that I underwater," Sandy finished, excited.

"Which means that… the whole street was pulled into that… black… something... that was caused by the earthquake," Elisa concluded, growing more dubious with each sentence, "That... would explain the car you saw. Sort of. In any case, I _think_ we were the only ones in the street at the time, so…"

Sandy nodded in agreement, "So, yeah, we didn't really get much cleared up, did we?"

"But this doesn't make any bloody_ sense_…" Elisa gasped, horrified even more so than her younger friend. If there was anything she truly feared it were things that didn't make any sense to her. Randomness and such. She was what some would call 'an extremely dull rational individual.'

The two girls looked at each other, trying to read the other's expression in quiet. However, silence was not possible when it came to the young hyperactive Alexandra. With a quick movement of her legs, she jumped to her feet and looked at the sky.

"Maybe we should get out of these wet clothes," she reminded the older girl, "We could, like, seriously catch a cold. It's hot, so how about we leave them on this rock here to dry, ok?"

"Right," Elisa agreed and, upon turning her head to look in every direction to confirm they were alone, started to take of her soaked clothing. For the first time since her eyesight came back to her, she had fully taken in her new surroundings. She was struck dumb at the thought that she had only done this _just now_ when her three years younger companion had obviously done that way before her. And **she** was the one who prided herself on her analytical abilities! Not wanting to admit her oversight, the girl stubbornly reminded herself that she had just nearly escaped death by drowning and left it at that.

They were indeed at the bank of a lake. But, unlike any lake she had ever seen, this one seemed like it had never been touched by a human hand before. It was pure aquamarine in colour and glittered in the sunlight like a jewel. Now when Elisa examined it, it looked peaceful and fairytale-like, and the girl shivered at how quickly it changed- not too long ago it seemed like a monster trying to take her life.

After the initial cold that had greeted her wet skin, her body was fast to adapt and was soon boiling in the blazing hot air. She knew that it _was _expected of summer to be quite warm, but really now: if it continued she would be dry completely in an hour, approximately. Also, she sighed, satisfied, there was no wind to bring her cold.

Then Elisa turned to her right, following the peculiar rushing sound and her jaw dropped in awe. There was an enormous waterfall foaming loudly at the end of the lake, carved into the steppe cliffs.

Holy crap, how come she didn't notice **that** before?!

A ferocious cough escaped her lips as a reminder.

_Never mind._

When she gave it a moment to think about it, the whole landscape vaguely reminded her of a cauldron: the steppe cliffs were the walls surrounding the deep bottom, the lake. It was almost like it was magically carved into the ground in a perfect circle. Narrowing her eyes slightly, Elisa mentally scolded herself for such an impossible thought. On the other hand, it seemed as though Sandy and she were lucky. The current the waterfall created brought the two of them to the shore nearest to the only flat ground there was and that was, she speculated, the only way out of the 'cauldron'.

Neatly spreading her clothes on a nearby rock, Elisa bent over and searched through her pockets. A moment later a small square-shaped object appeared in her hand.

"I'm gonna call my parents," she informed Sandy and opened the little telephone. Just like she herself and her clothes, the object was completely drenched. By some miracle the little screen was still faintly lighted, flickering, and she could_,_ albeit barely, see the squirrel from "_Ice Age_" on her wallpaper.

_Please work, s_he silently prayed and tapped the slippery numbers, before bringing it tentatively to her face.

. . .

Nothing happened.

Repeating the action more franticly this time and clenching the phone tightly next to her ear, Elisa eagerly expected to hear the repetitive beeping.

...again, nothing.

"Well fu-" she bit her lip to stop herself from swearing out angrily, clasping the lid loudly shut in retaliation.

"Hey, Liz, did you get 'em?" Sandy bounced next to her.

Elisa shook her head no.

Disappointed, the dark-skinned girl toyed with her own phone before discarding it quickly. "Man, it's totally damped! Mom's gonna kill me! This is the third phone I've ruined this year!"

"That's the least of our worries. Just where in the world are we?" Elisa turned around herself in fury, questioning no one in particular, "And what the hell had just happened? This is just- it's just-" she couldn't even find a word for it. She brought her hands up to shield her eyes as she tried to pinpoint a building or a high tower of a church or _anything really_ that would have helped her in orienting.

Her gut clenched. Good God, this was all just... just crazy! Never in her life had she felt so... so _very _uncomfortable, and that was an understatement. Half-naked, merely in her underwear (that was just as soaked but, _thankyouthankyouthankyou_, dark-coloured and hence not see-through), in a company of another naked little girl, standing exposed in an open field by some unknown lake, not too far from the first oak of a dark, what seemed like a wild forest.

In.

A middle.

Of.

_**Nowhere!**_

She had almost _drowned_ mere moment ago, had no contact with civilization whatsoever and, to top it all off, had to babysit a completely unaware girl.

_Lovely._

... would someone _please_ explain to her how could something like** that** could happen in twenty bloody minutes?

"Soooo, since we're, like, stuck here till our clothes dry," Sandy started almost cheerfully, eliciting an incredulous look from the older girl, "I'm just gonna do a little sunbathing." Following the statement, she lay on the grass and spread her limbs with a blissful look on her pretty face, satisfied.

Elisa couldn't help but gawk at her.

"Ugh, Sandy," she began, "I hardly think it's appropriate to be so… careless right now. Besides, you do know you're already tanned, don't you?"

"You can **never** be too tanned," Sandy countered matter-of-factly and, resembling a pancake, lazily flipped on her back.

It took her all the strength Elisa had not to sigh in exasperation. _What's up with this! We have no idea what has just happened and she's already enjoying herself? __And worrying about her appearances?..._ Since Sandy was half-Arabian, the younger girl inherited fine tanned skin, soft black hair that fell to the half of her back and wide deep brown eyes that screamed ENERGY. It will be no wonder, Elisa often thought, when she grows up into a rare beauty.

Her _brains_, on the other hand…

The girl named Elisa puzzled again over the fact that **this** thirteen-year-old girl had saved her life roughly half an hour ago. Elisa had known Sandy for pretty much forever, since her mom and Sandy's mom were close friends, and her younger sister Kate and Sandy were best friends, but... If she was to be honest, nothing of it never had much to do with her. Sure, she liked Sandy like she would a close relative, but the girl could be just plain irritating at times.

Unlike Sandy, waiting in one place for the clothes to dry was not something a person such as Elisa would enjoy. _Such a waste of time... _"Yeah, whatever," the older-girl muttered, uncrossing her arms in surrender, "I'll go and look around a bit."

"Mmmmm..." was the only reply she got.

Without seeking further encouragement, Elisa turned around and started to pace in the opposite direction.

The sun was burning the top of her head. What time was it, anyway?

The feeling of wild, sharp grass under her feet was unfamiliar and weird, not nearly as soft as she thought it would be. On the contrary, it pricked and tickled at the same time, making her waddle to the lake in ridiculous duck-steps. Her eyes wattered for some reason and she had to blink rapidly to clear them. The sun was beating down upon her, making her head spin. Finally, she felt that the weeds beneath her feet were wet and sprinkled with raindrops- a fact which confused her greatly.

_It... rained here recently? But... it's so warm! What kind of a bizarre weather is this?_ Not able to concentrate, the city-girl released those thoughts and sat beside the lake, examining its shimmering surface.

There, an image of a thin, pale-cheeked girl shivered in the watter. An ambitious, pointy chin from her father's side of the family, brown hair, a look of fright in her eyes. If not for the distressed, homeless look she was now wearing, the girl would have looked quite average, with the addition of her obscenely long hair. It _aggravated_ her in that moment, as it was terribly knotted when wet, as the case was. Now drenched and a few shades darker, it was sticking to her skin in messy patterns all the way to her bony waist. Her whole body was skinny and frail and implied weakness.

Still, this particular girl preferred to see it as an advantage out of a very particular reason, like every good optimist: nobody expected someone like her to be trained at self-defense, no?

Elisa turned her head up slightly to inspect the fuming waterfall she had previously noticed. On both sides of it, the cliffs were shaped into two gigantic statues. Elisa was currently looking at their humongous feet that appeared to be wearing some kind of sandals. If she were to compare them to human height, the girl measured that she would be roughly the size of its toe.

"Well, I'll be…" she murmured in amazement and raised her head further to study the rest of the statues. To her discontent, she could only see as far as the statues' waists from her frog-perspective, leaving their upper bodies out of her sight. It was mind-blowingly magnificent, she thought. To actually carve statues that big must have taken quite a toll. Seeing that she couldn't see more than their waists and down, she didn't know whether the figures represented males or females. All she knew was that the shoe style was very strange and very foreign. Not only that, but she'd never heard of such statues in her homeland and, at this thought, her stomach instinctively curled in dismay.

What if…?

_No._ The sixteen-year-old shook her head disapprovingly. _What in the world am I thinking... being so stupid. Get a grip, girl._

However, Elisa couldn't appease the nagging déjà vu, the sudden feeling of familiarity as she appraised the statues with her eyes. She knew she **had** seen them somewhere… but where?

_Maybe on TV, _she finally concluded, satisfied with the analysis. She absentmindedly brought her hand down and felt her skimpy clothes. _Almost dry. __Looks like I dazed off there for a moment, _she got up to her feet, _We should get going… somewhere…_ Something between a heavy sign and a yawn escaped her lips again her will. The whole rescuing sutuation left her feeling so terribly tired. Again she wondered what time it was. She didn't even have her breakfast yet. Questions and unsettling thoughts accumulated in her mind, and in an attempt to preoccupy herself with something, Elisa hurried to get her clothes.

"Get up," she poked Sandy's back, at which the girl in question grumbled in protest, "Let's get going. I bet Kate is completely pissed at you for being late. You know how she is… "

Her little sister always had quite an impatient and edgy personality, after all…

"Yeah, yeah, right…" she heard Sandy murmur, before she turned and continued on to get her clothes. Elisa tumbled over her pockets once again and examined her inventory.

"Let's see… One out-of-order telephone, some drenched, almost ripped paper bills and two pieces of chewing- gum," she counted inconsolably. Her eyebrows knitted together in a sarcastic frown, "Yup, sure got all of mine camping equipment…"

The sixteen-year-old shook her head, dissatisfied, and cast a side-glance at the waterfall with its statues again. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she instinctively knew that she was missing something. It put her on edge, because whatever it was...

…she felt that it was something really, really important…

* * *

**Translation: Omne principium grave- Every beginning is tough.**

**A/N: Hmmm… Not much happened, I guess, but this is going to be a slow fic- remember, I'm trying to keep up the realism, after all. Cheers to anyone who can guess where the girls are. ;D (even though it's obvious enough, no?)  
**

**As always, reviews and constructive criticism are appreciated.  
**


	4. Terra incognita

**Chapter three:**

**Terra incognita**

**A/N: First of all, I want to thank the respective authors of fanfics "With Bated Breath" and "Kidnap to Insanity" (both can be found in my favorites). Mostly they (with few other fanfiction authors) fed me with inspiration to write my own story. So, if any of you want, I highly recommend you check out these realistic stories.  
**

* * *

"But I'm tiiiired," a whining voice called out again and once more a steady voice replied, this time with a hint of irritation.

"Sandy, I already told you we'll rest when we get to the first gas station. Please deal with it for a little longer." _And please shut your mouth while you're at it…_

The two girls were following a dirty, old road that meandered between the oaks to no end. They were lucky enough to even _find_ a road, Elisa realized, however old- fashioned it may be, for it seemed they were farther away from home than they had previously thought. The muddy route seemed to be their only option.

"But we've been walking for _hours_!" the smaller of the girls squeaked indignantly, "My legs hurt! _And_ I'm thirsty! How come you're not thirsty?"

Elisa gritted her teeth and answered in the most pleasant tone she could muster, "Gee, I don't know, maybe because I had _plenty_ of water when I almost drowned this morning."

". . . Okay." Sandy went silent.

_Thank God for small miracles,_ Elisa thought sardonically and hoped the younger girl would keep quiet for a few more… hours at least.

Living in a city for her entire life, Elisa didn't get much time for forest walks, seeing that there weren't any. If she willed herself to look at this from the bright side (_however hard it might've been..._) the whole experience reminded her of summer vacations spent at her gramps.

Except…

She was getting more frightened with each passing moment. Each and every oak tree towering above her was unusually huge, with wide luxurious crown that concealed the cloudless sky and cast impressive shade. Between the splits in the crowns spilled rays of light, like golden sand through an hourglass. Elisa had never seen anything like it, except on Discovery channel or Animal Planet, and couldn't stop the oncoming dread that crept up her spine.

The warm breeze was filled with sweet chirps of birds and a distant smell of honey. It tickled her nostrils teasingly and her stomach bustled, producing a long treacherous growl.

_Oh dear…_

"Ha!" Sandy pointed her finger accusingly at her, "_You_ are hungry! Let's stop to rest." With this she sat at the first tree trunk and interlined her fingers behind her head in a lazy manner.

A moment of pause.

"And how is _that _exactly going to feed me and quench your thirst?" the older girl's eye twitched and she felt a sudden urge to count to ten _really slowly_.

"Um…well…"

Elisa could almost _see _a hamster in Sandy's head spinning the wheel for a plausible excuse.

"Get up. Think of it this way: the sooner we get _anywhere,_ the sooner we get to eat, drink or whatever," she continued down the route and heard Sandy get up with an audible sigh.

Elisa knew that she turned out rather bossy but, to justify it, the other careless girl didn't make much sense. Someone had to be in control, Elisa thought. She waited for the other girl to catch up and they so continued to walk. Looking from the corner of her eye, she caught the sight of Sandy's face and realized that the younger girl truly was exhausted: she probably wouldn't be able to keep going for much longer. Elisa acknowledged this fact reasonably. After all, they **had** been walking non-stop for some time now, though without a clock it was useless to estimate time. It might have been an hour, two, or three…

Unlike Sandy, whose only physical practices were in her P.E. classes, the sixteen-year-old knew that it was unfair to demand of the smaller girl to keep up, when she herself _did _train three times a week and was thus at least a bit more enduring. But as the situation was, Elisa knew that she couldn't feign pity and slow down. And she prayed them would at least come across someone and get some directions, before exhaustion took its toll on her too...

Through the green of the leaves she could faintly see sun high in the sky, revealing it was probably well around noon or even more possibly- later. She did a quick calculation of time in her head: the strange incident took place around 11 AM (it was a summer vacation and she had been too lazy to get up earlier)_, _the whole 'rescuing mission' probably lasted ten to twenty minutes (it seemed like a century to her) and then they waited for their clothes to dry for a little over an hour. In fact, she touched the fabric of her jeans, they were still quite moist.

Her simple black shirt with some colored circles was completely dry, and _(thank goodness) _so was her underwear. Her favourite black and white Converse shoes were not as compliant to dry fast, and in them Elisa felt like she was repeatedly steeping into pools of water. Sandy had the same problem with her clothes. Her jeans, bright red T-shirt and striped red and white sneakers were still a little bit wet, but Sandy mustered up all the strength she had to ignore it. Their scalps were still wet and Elisa twitched every time a cold bead rolled down her exposed neck.

All in all, she concluded it was probably around two, three or even four PM.

_And still no sight of civilization other that this blasted road,_ she thought and, giving up, opened her mouth to finally declare a break—

"Oh my like totally GOD, Liz, look!" an abnormally loud squeal make her flinch and stop dead in her tracks. Annoyed, she followed Sandy's pointed finger... and her lips formed a wide smile at the sight.

There were houses. Lots of 'em.

"Cold Coke, here I come! Hurry up Liz!" the thirteen-year-old dashed happily beside her towards the town.

"Don't call me that!" Elisa shouted after her and picked up her pace. _Hmpf, and she said _she _was tired!_

Both girls raced towards the entry to the town. Upon getting there, they smiled at each other in happiness.. but soon stood baffled for a few moments, taking in the sight.

It was... definitely not what they expected to find.

The streets weren't asphalted, but they were covered in brown dirt. A small bunch of people was standing behind counters selling vegetables and fruit around a small fountain in the middle o_f _an old fashioned market. The people were wearing very uncommon and poor clothing, all of them in earthy brown colors.

"What the hell? What's up with these people?" Sandy voiced her thoughts aloud. It seemed that the little town was in fact an even smaller village.

Elisa kept quiet as she tried to remember if there was such a small settlement near the capital town she and Sandy lived in. She couldn't remember any.

"No matter, they surely have phones. Let's go in and ask," the dark-skinned girl motioned to a house that stood directly on their right, at the very entry to this village. It looked… normal, or should they say, _modern_, and there was a familiar sign with a fork and a knife that symbolized a diner.

The two girls stepped in and the moment they did so a couple of heads turned to them. The diner was obviously not very popular: there were only about four _(male, _her mind warned her_) _guests sitting around the wooden tables. Suddenly Elisa felt very unpleasant at being stared at like that and hurried to the counter, with Sandy scurrying behind her as she did so. The younger girl childishly clinged to her and from the strength of her grip Elisa knew that Sandy shared her emotions. There were clouds of smoke swirling in the air and her eyes began to water slightly in the corners.

She walked confidently to the high wooden counter and saw the bartender. It only took Elisa a moment to analyze him: older plump man, receding black hair, mouse-like black eyes, dirty apron, smoker's yellow teeth. His whole appearance screamed messy, _just like the whole place, _she added in her head. Not being the kind of a person to be too disturbed by mere looks, Elisa smiled politely and was about to greet him when—

"Youkosoonnanokotachi!" the bartender barked and the girls flinched away, watching him absolutely stupefied. He grinned with his yellow teeth and cast a curious look at their clothes before he continued, "Naniwoomotedesuka."

". . ."

_I beg your pardon?_

Behind her, Sandy frowned and tugged her black shirt, "Umm… Liz… What did he just say?"

The man continued to stare at them expectantly.

Elisa was struck dumb, puzzling out the situation for a moment. Wait.. she recognized that language! Turning her head slightly to Sandy she said, "Oh, we must've entered a Japanese restaurant! Hahaha…"

With a smile still fixed on her lips, Elisa faced the waiting bartender and asked, "Could you please let us use the phone, mister? We're lost and..." Her sentence faded into the air as the man before her furrowed his thick eyebrows in confusion.

"Nani?"

. . .

Oh, he **did not **just ask her in Japanese again! Elisa looked at him irritated. Was he messing with her? Ok, so maybe he worked in a Japanese bar, but he obviously didn't look Japanese, and to pretend not to understand her was just plain rude. Sandy nudged her in the ribs and she was about to retort to him when the man spoke up again.

"Gochuumonwa ikagaitashimashouka."

Awkward silence.

Elisa glared at him, horrified. _The man really doesn't speak English!_ She looked left and right for help. She found none, quickly deciding that she didn't really want to address either of the strange-looking males sitting about the girl took a deep breath and turned to the old man again.

_Ok, Elisa, you can do this…_

It looked like she would have to converse in Japanese, something she'd only done in her classes. Being a huge fan of anime, her friend and she had signed up for a Japanese language course six months ago, before she had to drop them recently before her finals started. She had learned to write hiragana, katakana and a few kanji, but her vocabulary expanded to only about five hundred words. She was a beginner for crying out loud.

_Oh, this is gonna suck… Why do Japanese people talk so damn fast?_

"S-Sumimasen ga, yoku wakarimasen," _(I- I'm sorry, I don't understand)_ she started shakily one of the first sentences they learned in the course, "Mou ichido, itte k-kudasai?" _(Could you p- please repeat that)_?

The bartender looked at her incredulously, like she was retarded or something (_yeah, like it's a weird thing NOT to understand Japanese, _she thought sarcastically) and he repeated slowly, like to a very small, possibly slow child.

"Gochuumon wa ikaga itashimashou ka," he folded his big, hairy arms on his chest, in a manner that indicated impatience.

"What did he say?" Sandy whispered in her ear uneasily, clearly having felt the tension in the air. From the corner of her eyes, Elisa saw that the entire place had went quiet and all of the guests were listening in on their awkward conversation.

She licked her lips nervously, "I don't know. The 'ka' at the end of the sentence indicates that it's a question…"

"Well no DUH, he _sounds_ like he's asking us a question! We don't need a translator for that!" Sandy hissed in her ear and Elisa could yet again feel her cheeks warming up in embarrassment, praying that it wouldn't show.

"Denwa wa a-arimasu ka." _Do you have a phone?_ She found her voice again and asked hesitantly, ignoring his previous question altogether.

The man's mouse-like-eyes darkened in annoyance and he strained through clenched teeth, "AREwa nandesuka!" _What is THAT? _

_Hell YES!_ She understood what he said! Those six months actually paid off! Elisa did a little happy dance in her mind and...

...and...

Wait.

_Did he just say "__**What is a phone?"**_

Sandy shifted behind her uncomfortably, Elisa stared dumbfounded, the bar was silent while the bartender fumed furiously.

. . .

_No, that's impossible. _He was just messing with her. He **had** to know what a phone was…

And still, somehow, when she looked at him, Elisa knew that wasn't true. The dread she felt earlier that day came back and electrified her spine full speed.

_What **in the world'**s going on here?_

The old geezer was clearly ticked off and no longer in the mood to be polite to possible customers. He took a deep, calming breath and questioned accusingly, "Omae wa… Okuni wa dochira deska. Hi no kuni kara kimasuka."

Her mind raced as she struggled to translate.

"_Ok, ok, calm down… Omae means You, in informal and rude speech... Why is this guy so pissed off with me? Focus! What does 'Okuni' mean? Okuni, okuni… I'm certain 'kuni' means state or a country and the rest of the sentence… Oh, he must be asking me where I'm from! Good, Elisa, good. Next: 'kara' is translated with 'from', and 'kimasu' is a verb 'to come', which means that he's asking me if I'm from this 'Hi no kuni'. And 'Hi' means fire! Which leads me to conclusion that…"_

". . ."

Elisa stared at him in pure disbelief for a few long moments before she released a low chuckle.

_The Land of Fire? __**The **__Land of Fire? Did I just spend a lifetime arguing with a total nut job?_

Sandy shook her hand rapidly, "What? What? What's so funny? What are you two talking about? Will he let us use his phone or-"

Elisa didn't listen to her anymore because in that moment something else caught her attention. It wasn't just the old Naruto freak, every single guest behind them was speaking fluent Japanese!

_Well... this is certainly weird,_ she thought to herself. And then...

A feeling of dread washed over her.

Her mind was slow in connecting the dots, but soon a realization was forming in her mind...

A realization so improbable, so unimaginable, _so incredible_…

… that still made **perfect** sense.

Elisa's breath caught in her throat and her whole body stiffened at the sheer craziness of the idea. No, no, no, that can't be right. There;s just no freaking way...

_Two weirdly dressed giant statues on either side of waterfall;_

_wide forests;_

_blazing weather;_

_Japanese village;_

_The Land of Fire…_

... Holy- holy _**shit.**_

"Hey! Hey Liz! Are you oke-" in one swift motion, Elisa grabbed hana by her small arm and started to literally drag the frightened girl out of the diner, followed by shocked looks from the occupants of the bar.

_This is not happening, it can't be happening, this is not happening, it can't be happening, this is not…_

She hurriedly exited the choking ambient of the musky bar and pulled her young friend into the deserted earthy street. There was a distant smell of rice in the air and her stomach growled at her, deeply unsatisfied.

… _happening. It can't be happening. This is __**not **__happening…_

"Whoa whoa **whoa** Liz, hold it! What's gotten into you all of a sudden?" Sandy trotted after her senior friend, stumbling on pebbles and dirt. Sensing that the sixteen-year-old had no intention of stopping any time soon, Sandy did it for her. She dug her heals into the rough ground and jerked her hand from the other's grip, effectively halting her actions.

Dazed, disoriented, lost, Elisa whirled around to her. One look at her rigid face was enough to make Sandy's alarm bells ring loud and clear. "God _Liz,_ what's happening? What did that guy tell you? Why are you acting like this? Why—"

"Alexandra," the long-haired girl's voice was strained and unnervingly calm, "**don't**… call me that."

"Whatever, _Elisa_! Tell me!" she demanded more furiously, irritated with Elisa's avoidance of a reasonable answer.

"If I tell you, you won't believe me!" the panicking girl raised her voice a whole note, before instantly lowering it to a whisper, "No, it's just _impossible_…"

"You're not making any sense!" Sandy stepped to her and squeezed her shoulders untll they started to hurt, "Damn, girl, stop it! Stop scaring me like this! Please, just… just say what you found out already!"

The practically shrieked request woke her up from her chaotic thoughts. Elisa was shocked, and '_shocked_' wasn't her preferable emotion. But Sandy was **frightened** and it was partially **her** fault.

"Sandy, listen up," she began, voice dead serious, and for the first time in many years she saw Sandy's face straighten up in pure _serious_ concentration, "I'm… not completely sure myself. But there's no other way of putting this…"

She took a deep breath to stop her voice from shaking, "I think that... we are not in our world anymore."

Elisa waited for a variety of reactions to her words: disbelief, shock, even ridicule, but all she got from her companion was a blank face and a slow blink.

_Blink._

And another one.

"What are you saying exactly?"

. . .

If the situation wasn't _so damn freaky _Elisa would have succumbed to the urge to drag a palm across her face. Still, she tried to keep her voice flat and serious, fisting the material of her shirt in trembling hands.

"What I'm saying is," she tried again, pronouncing every word intentionally slowly, "I know it's impossible but... shit... no, it's actually possible that we've _somehow_ ended up in a completely _different world_, completely _different dimension_…"

Her legs buckled beneath her and Elisa tiredly slumped on the edge of the little fountain. She had to close her eyes as she made her announcement, "This is gonna sound insane and I don't think I even believe it myself... But the fact still remains. I'm almost certain that we're currently in…"

_There was no mistaking it. The lake. The statues. __**The Valley of the End.**_

"… the world of Naruto…"

* * *

**Translation: Terra incognita- An unknown land**

**If anyone's wondering what the bartender said, here are the translations (remember, Elisa doesn't know Japanese well enough to translate this):**

**Youkoso onnanokotachi! – Welcome young girls!**

**Nani wo omote desu ka. – What can I do for you?**

**Gochuumon wa ikaga itashimashou ka. – What would you like to order?**

**Tell me what you think and REVIEW!**


	5. Nomen est omen

**Chapter five:**

**Nomen est omen**

**A/N: Many thanks go to Mt749, shadow-ninja44, Kira-seven, ****XxDarkSarcasm1010xX, Noc007 and NameGoesHere for reviewing the last chapter. ****You guys make me happy. So here's the fifth chapter and... yeah... enjoy!**  


* * *

All her ears were met with was complete silence on the other side of her closed eyelids. Elisa felt a pearl of water gliding down her neck and mixing with hot sweat. She could feel an almost palpable exhaustion bath her. With a great deal of effort she made herself open her eyes, only to meet Sandy's unimpressed look.

"Well?"

_Come on. React already._

Another moment of silence followed the question.

Then, slowly, the mute girl finally tilted her head to the side, remarkably resembling a small, cute and utterly confused child. "Naruto? What is Narut—_Wait!_ Isn't that that geeky Japanese show with that blond kid and his _insanely_ hot friend? _That_ Naruto?" Sandy's eyes went wide with shock.

_Bingo, you've got it _Elisa asserted the thought in her mind and nodded head in acknowledgement. She was getting too hungry and tired to even give an audible answer. _Of course, Sandy only remembered it because of Sasuke… Ah, the hormones… And what was that about Naruto being geeky?_

Sandy seemed to contemplate the acquired information for a moment and opened her mouth. Without uttering a word, she closed them. Then opened them again before quickly smashing them shut. Gapping like fish on dry land. The poor girl was obviously at the loss of words…

And then Sandy exploded with laughter.

"R-really funny Liz…hahaha…" the dark-skinned girl held her stomach as she struggled to form coherent words, "…You totally… haha… fooled me with your, like, 'serious' face… hahahaha..."

Elisa growled. _Oh Jesus-  
_

"Hahaha… What a joke…" the younger girl calmed down after a minute and smiled up at her, "Wow, for a moment there I actually thought something serious had happened! So, why don't we just go in nicely and get that phone-"

"Alexandra, listen to me. There. Are. No. Phones. Here!"

Sandy smiled reassuringly and sat next to her, "Riiiiiiight. Ok Liz, game's over, I'm onto you. Ya know, you could totally be an actress, you almost convin-"

"For crying out loud, Sandy, this IS serious!" Elisa was losing her patience, quick, and she had been told to be a pretty patient person. Calm, easy-going and rational… most of the time. Very level-headed. But in that moment, with _**this**_ girl…

"Alright look," Elisa hushed the still-giggling teen, "have you noticed how every single guest in the diner spoke in Japanese?"

"Show-offs," Sandy shrugged, still hickupping giggles, "Or tourists".

"But they don't look Asian to you, do they?" Elisa tried again but changed her approach just in case, "Then, this village is completely archaic! And did you notice how weird that forest was? And the weather is too hot, it's almost tropical-"

"Hey, Liz, chill, it's summer!" Sandy rolled her eyes confidently at her.

"And what about those statues?" Elisa folded her hands over her chest, bringing out that one indisputable evidence that had convinced even her, "Sandy, that place is called The Valley of the End in the show. It's an important place where Naruto and Sasuke had a huge epic fight and-"

"Oh come on, that nerdy show's popular! It's obviously fan-made, or something… It's like Disneyland! Or Legoland! Or…" Sandy started counting all of the –lands on her fingers and Elisa couldn't help but rub her temples to ease an upcoming migraine.

_No no no no no no no no no no NO!_

It was all completely _**wrong**__._

If this was all true... then she was living every Naruto fan's dream for crying out loud! She was supposed to appear in front of the gates of Konoha. She was _supposed_ to have some of her best friends, who were also Naruto fans, with her. She was _**supposed**_ to meet the characters, make friends and become a freaking ninja!

... so _**why **_was she sitting in some remote nameless village who knows where, alone, with an irritating _neighbour_ who had absolutely _no clue_ about what was going on around her?!

This was definitely not how she had fancied it.

This was most definitely not like in stories she read with such enjoyment.

After the initial shock upon the revelation of their location, the new emotion that replaced it was not glee, nor joy, not even a very understandable fear. It was nothing but raw, cruel _disappointment_.

_**Everything was so wrong.**_

Elisa took a deep calming breath and slowly exhaled. She found that she did that a lot recently.

_Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in…_

"—and there was supposed to be Harry Potter Land, and there's also…"

Unfortunately…

…_breathe out… breathe in…_

… it wasn't working.

"This is all wrong!" a panicked shout escaped her lips, causing Sandy to jump to her feet startled.

**THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!**

Both girls simultaneously turned to the source of the noise. Various fruits and vegetables scattered over the ground when an old sick-looking woman dropped them, taken aback with the unexpected shriek. She stood at the nearest counter and, judging from the numerous baskets, was probably packing her merchandise when the yell frightened her.

"I guess that's my fault…" Elisa murmured and, feeling guilty, watched as the short woman tried to bend with her rusty spine. Her face was a grimace of pain, and her wrinkled hands trembled from old age as she slowly picked up her apples. Cheap plastic beads around her neck clicked softly against one another. Poor baggy clothes were a little too wide for the frail old woman and she stumbled on them, threatening to fall over.

Elisa quickly motioned to Sandy to follow her and walked up to the elderly saleswoman. She took a firm hold of her shriveled hand and helped her straighten up. The old woman gave her a surprised look but didn't protest. As soon as she made sure the woman was stable on her feet, Elisa bent to pick up the rest of the crops she had made her drop.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to…" the girl trailed off when the woman just gave her a curious look. She signed and gave a brie_f I-told-you-that-nobody-can-understand-us_ look to Sandy over her shoulder before she continued putting the vegetables back in the baskets.

Sandy stood at the side, now in thought. With each passing second her face twisted deeper in uncertain disbelief. _Could they really be in a different world? _She tapped her foot impatiently.

The crops smelled tantalizingly delicious to Elisa and she prayed her stomach wouldn't make itself known. She finished putting the last tomato into the large brushwood basket and the old woman smiled a wide toothless grin at her.

"Doumo arigatou shoujo-san," _Thank you very much girl, s_he said bowing in a very Japanese way. Elisa smiled uneasily at this reaction. She supposed that it _was _normal to Japanese people to just bow like that in the middle of a street…

"D-dou itashimashite," _Y- You're welcome, s_he managed to conjure when—

"Oh come on already, don't mess with me you two! Hey you, old hag, do you have a phone? A p-ho-n-e?" Sandy spoke up suddenly and pointed her finger at the old saleswoman, who gave her the most incredulous look.

"Nani?" _What?_

_The idiot!_ Elisa thought and grabbed the clueless girl's elbow, dragging her away from the startled old woman.

"Sandy, I told you they _don't _speak English in this world. In fact, here it doesn't even exist! It's, like you said, a _Japanese _show…" she hissed through clenched teeth in the girl's ear.

"But that's totally-!"

"Hush!" Elisa made her sit back on the fountain edge and the thirteen-year-old crossed her arms in front of her with an evident pout on her lips.

_Damn, that was too close…_ Elisa puffed and looked at the woman's back as she abandoned the market, unsteadily carrying her heavy baskets.

The market-place was quickly emptied, without a soul to be seen. The yelling salesmen went packing their merchandise and abandoned their counters one by one. All the inhabitants were gone, retiring to their respective homes to rest and prepare for the night that was about to fall. Only two oddly dressed girls sat at the old fountain and whispered in a strange, incoherent language…

"A-Alright, so let's say that, hypothetically, we really are in a different world," by the sound of it, Sandy was starting to mull over the idea, "Then what? W-What do we do?"

Fright. Panic. Disbelief. Sandy's eyes changed drastically only in a couple of moments that took for this new possibility to register in her young mind. Her lips twitched as she stubbornly tried to keep a careless smile on her face.

_Too bad Sandy is a bad actress._

Elisa decisively stared at her own feet while she herself desperately tried to accept the fact that she was in charge. Now that she got Sandy to believe her, she realized how hard it was to make _herself_ believe it. The other girl was looking expectantly at her.

So it was really all up to her? She made athe calls now. She was truly alone in this.

And, most importantly, she had _no idea whatsoever_ what to do in this kind of a situation… She was completely lost.

All at once, there was a huge weight on her shoulders: the responsibility over her junior companion. To explain. To guide. And Elisa was suddenly afraid.

She briefly wondered why hasn't any Naruto character showed up by now. That's how it worked, right? Just like in fanfiction, they should have been saved by someone and eating ramen at Ichiraku for dinner right now. Right?

_Wrong._

_**This is all so terribly wrong.**_

The blazing sun had soothed as it made its path to the distant purple mountains. The sultriness changed to a warm breeze, indicating the soon-to-come nightfall. The birds sang sweetly, like they would on a very ordinary day. The forest was rustling soothingly, just like it would in a very common countryside. All was very normal and nothing was amiss or, dare Elisa say it, strange.

And despite of it all, the girls felt like being on a completely alien planet.

"I guess the first thing to do is... conceal, or should I say, change our identities," Elisa suggested and licked her lips nervously. At Sandy's blatant 'WTF' squeal she quickly added, "Look, this world's very similar to Japan. They have no real knowledge of other nations or languages, so our names will sound very foreign and suspicious."

The sixteen-year-old Elisa felt sort of proud of herself. She even managed to sound _reasonable_, although she was saying total rubbish. She could at least _sound_ like she knew what the hell she was talking about, right? _So, the smart thing to do is to at least** try **to act smart. Yes, that's it._ She didn't know what to say or do, so she turned to the next best thing: improvisation.

Sandy nodded her head thoughtfully, "Yeah, I- I guess that makes sense…"

Apparently it worked.

Elisa watched her little sister's best friend and felt very bad for the girl. Sandy was only now getting the seriousness of the situation and, by the way she chewed on her lip, she could tell it was affecting her greatly. It was more apparent that Sandy was merely 'going with the flow' the whole time, even though she had no idea where 'the flow' was actually taking her. And now she was starting to question it...

"So," Sandy fidgeted slightly beside her, uncomfortable from the cool surface of the fountain, "how are we gonna do that?"

"We'll have to choose ourselves new names," Elisa explained to her after a moment's consideration, "Japanese names. These people probably won't be able to pronounce ours."

Sandy shook her head vigorously at the suggestion, "Liz, I don't know any Japanese names! They sound weird… I like mine fine…"

"Well you can't keep it." Elisa said in final tone. She pondered something for a moment, "I'll be Akane. It's a common name, as much as I know, and I'm used to it because I used it before for rpg-s and stuff… Can you remember that? Say it after me: A- ka- ne."

"Aaah- kaa- neh?" the other girl's dark eyebrows formed a slight 'v' on her forehead from concentration.

"… close enough." _She'll learn it soon,_ Elisa was optimistic.

"So, Aah-kane, what will my code name be?" Sandy asked excitedly and bounced in her seat.

The newly named 'Akane' frowned.

"It's not a _code_ name, Alexandra, this will be your real name here, don't forget that. From this moment on, your name is not Sandy, got it?"

"Tsch, yeah, what-like-totally-ever. Geez Elisa, when you're all serious like that, you sound just like my mother…"

Elisa ignored the comment and went over all the Japanese feminine names she knew from various anime… It had to be common, as to not attract attention, and it had to be short, for God knew Sandy wouldn't be able to remember it.

_Sakura? No, that would be weird… Mai? Nah. Yuki? I don't think so. Hana? Hana sounds most English. I think there's a also character in Naruto named Hana, but at least she's not one of the main characters…_

"What do you think about the name 'Hana'?" Elisa voiced her thoughts aloud.

_It's common. It's short. It's perfect._

"Heeey, you mean like Hannah Montana? I love it!" the newly named 'Hana' clapped her hands gleefully.

Elisa refrain from making a grimace, "Yeah, whatever floats your boat. If you want to know, 'Hana' means flower in Japanese, so…"

"A flower? Really? Aw, my name is so cute! Oh oh oh! What does your name mean?" Sandy asked bright-eyed. Elisa was taken aback a little from this huge enthusiasm and her eyebrows rose slightly.

"Akane? I read somewhere it means 'deep bloody red' …"

Sandy stared at her.

"Well that's dumb. And kinda gross."

Elisa's eye twitched. _My name is gross?_

"If what you're implying is that it's gross because of its connection with blood, that's just ridiculous. Heck, you yourself want to be a doctor! Isn't that why you are taking those medic classes in the first place?"

The dark-skinned girl played with tresses of her recently dry hair as she answered, "Yeah, sure I do, but that doesn't mean I have to like blood. It's yucky, it's sticky, and it grosses me out."

"Well, anyway…" Elisa changed the uncomfortable subject, "We should find a place to stay the night. I have a few paper bills, but... oh no, they use a different currency here... so I guess they're basically useless…"

"Are you saying that we're stuck in an anime-world and we have no money at all?"

Elisa nodded sourly.

_. . ._

_One…_

_. . ._

_Two…_

_. . ._

_Three_…

_. . ._

"Oh my God, we're going to DIEEE!" the other girl panicked and waved her hands franticly for better impression, "We're sooo gonna die! And before that I'm going to die of THIRST! And-"

"You know there's a fountain right behind you, right?" Elisa rolled her eyes and motioned behind her back.

"…water!" Sandy exclaimed and started to greedily suck the fountain dry. Elisa shook her head slightly. _Oh for the love of…_

Her own stomach curled and she wrapped her arms around her waist to ease the pain. She hadn't had anything for lunch nor breakfast… She had planned to eat as soon as she got back from the store this morning but… well, just look at how that ended.

It was late afternoon and, even though the sun wasn't about to set quit eyet, Elisa thought it would be for the best if they inspected their surroundings a little bit more. _Location, location, location._ This village had obviously not been shown in the series, the self-proclaimed Akane noticed, and she had no flippin' idea where they were. The closest destination she recognized was The Valley of the End, which she guessed was a few-days-walk in ninja speed from Konoha. But what if…?

She pushed her next thought to the back of her head.

_Find shelter. That should be first on our to-do-list right now. Gonna think about those particular things later._

Choosing her priorities, Elisa poked the younger girl in the ribs. Sandy made a muffled grumbling sound but refused to step away from her source of content.

"Slow down, you'll drown yourself in that fountain!" she said jokingly.

_The endless blue… suffocating… screeching… _Her pulse quickened at the unpleasant memory. behind her, Sandy wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

Elisa shook her head to get rid of the unsettling flashes, "Alright, now we can explore this village and find a place to stay the night. Anything will do. A barn, an old house…"

Sandy wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Hey, I'm not gonna sleep in a fucking bar-"

"_Hana,_ we don't have the luxury of choosing our accommodations," Elisa pointed out sternly.

Sandy gave her a confused stare before she remembered her new name with a small "Ohh…" forming between her lips.

And so they left the market. The two young girls walked the dirty streets of the village attracting some odd looks as they came across some old geezers who appraised their clothing with a disapproving narrow of their eyes. Elisa was starting to notice how almost everybody they've seen in this village so far was well over forty. _What the hell's up with this place?_

As they walked, Elisa explained the basics of this world's geography to Sandy the best she knew. ("_There are whole hidden villages of ninja?!"_)

She told her the main plot, about Naruto and Sasuke's friendship and rivalry (_"I bet this Sasuke could totally mop the floor with Naruto! He's much better looking!") _and the shinobi life _("Are there any non-psychos here?")._ She also told her about chakra and all the amazing stuff ninja could do with it (_"They can do WHAT?!"_). However, Elisa kept most of the dirty little details to herself. She didn't tell her anything specific about the characters or the progress of the story. She didn't tell her about the missing-ninjas, antagonists and wars. Somehow, she knew that would be too much for the younger girl to take at once. After all, Sandy thought that Naruto was only an actiony kid show with a lot of cute guys. She listened wide eyes while Elisa narrated the story and jumped with excitement.

"Wow Li… I-I mean, Akaneeh!"

"**Akane.**"

"Right, Akane. That sounds way cool! Maybe… maybe I'll even like it here."

"I know it all sounds very interesting," Akane agreed, "but remember, it is all very real in this world. These are not the people to mess with. Their job _is_ to kill."

An hour passed.

And then two and a half more.

And the two girlswalked still, searching copletely unenthusiastically by now. It had gotten dark so fast the girls hardly noticed. They had made a full circle around the village and inspected it twice diagonally, only to come back to the marketplace. Faint light emitted from the houses through the windows and illuminated the dark streets.

The silence felt disturbing- there were no cars in the distance, no muffled sounds from TV sets, no screaming children going home from school. It turned out that the village had only about a hundred houses or so. They also conformed that the village was built on a crossway between three dirty roads that led who knew where. Most of the inhabitants were elderly and apparently engaged in agriculture, if it was to judge by the tools and orchards they saw between the houses.

Yet for all their search, the girls couldn't find one single place to spend the night at. They both refused to knock on someone's door like beggars, due to embarrassment and the fact they couldn't speak the language. In the end, having no better idea, they returned to the familiar square. They dropped down on one of the stone benches that circled the fountain and leaned against one another.

It was dark. They were dirty. They were tired. They were hungry. But above anything else, they were completely alone.

And that's what suddenly terrified them.

Sandy's enthusiasm ran out as the time passed and, soon enough, the sensitive girl was holding back sobs and staring silently at her hands folded in her lap. The older girl, feeling awkward herself, nudged Sandy's side in a comforting manner. Elisa felt guilty and scared and… this was all so unlike her. She had always seen herself to be a confident, sarcastic, _mature_ one in her group of friends back home.

Then how come now she felt so small, so little, so _too young_ to be sitting in a lonely street in the middle of a night, comforting a girl that depended entirely on her for guidance?

Elisa could only hum softly a random tune, as if to a small child, in attempt to calm Sandy and stop her from crying. The younger girl shifted and climbed with her whole body onto the large bench, putting her head in Elisa's lap. She sniffed once more and closed her eyes, drifting to some well deserved sleep, without a second thought about their security. Elisa's- _no-_ _Akane_'s stomach bubbled even more so than San-_Hana_'s. Even though the dark-haired girl was younger, she was already used to dieting, unlike her skinny senior.

Akane tilted her head back and cast her sight to the dark skies. _Gods. I can't do this._

Above her, there were billions of stars. And they were beautiful, breathtaking. But the only thing Akane thought about was how they were not the stars she knew back home. The only constellation she knew was one shaped like a pouring-spoon her dad showed to her, whatever it was called, but she couldn't find even that one. As a result, the only thing she could think about was how disgustingly fake these skies were, with stars so many and so brighter. So very falsely gorgeous.

_This is not happening…_

_This isn't supposed to be this way..._

_It's all wrong… _

Her eyelids fell over her eyes and Akane rested her head against the hard back of the bench. The uncertainty about tomorrow ate away at her, not leaving her even behind closed eyelids. Each second brought a new wave of dread and helplessness. _What in the world are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go?_

In her sleep, the girl who was now Hana curled up closer to her, seeking warmth and protection. A sudden realization caused Akane to wrap her arms around the sleeping girl in her lap tightly. If she, who was older, calmer and more knowledgeable about this than her fellow companion felt thoroughly lost, then how must the petite thirteen-year-old, who knew very little about this world, really feel?

So maybe she irritated her to no end… so maybe she was spoiled and squeamish… maybe she was everything Akane swore to herself she wouldn't be… but Sandy was only _a kid;_ a child who longed for attention, for love, and who tried to act mature, even though on a very superficial scale.

Elisa's hands entwined warmly with Sandy's tender fingers; the moment they touched, she felt safer. She was not alone. They were together. They could do this. Finally giving into exhaustion, Elisa momentarily fell asleep… hand in hand with an annoying, dumb, shallow, hyper little girl she had known, but not really know, for so long…

… and, in a new and absolutely weird way, a friend.

Yes, hand in hand with a friend; a friend she swore she would protect from this night on, from anything, from anyone, no matter what the cost.

_No matter what the cost… _her mind echoed into the darkness, before she was thrown upside-down into a black dreamless sleep.

Then, she knew no more.

* * *

**Translation: Nomen est omen- The name is a sign (Implies that the name is fitting for the object or person).**

**A/N: I'm not very content with this chapter… I tried fixing it, but I just feel it's missing something. Oh well, it's important for the future events, so… Please tell me what you think about the girls' first day and review.  
**


	6. Multa docet fames

**Chapter six:**

**Multa docet fames**

**A/N: Nooo, I broke my 'update-every-Friday' cycle! My net was jammed so I couldn't post the chapter. T.T Anyway, onward with it! Enjoy! **

* * *

Elisa had never been woken up in such a horrid way. The sun was mercilessly bright through the skin of her inner eyelids, painting her blurry vision vermilion red. Her poor neck ached terribly as if somebody had cracked every single vertebra in it individually. Her entire body was rigid and sore from sleeping in such an unnatural position; she felt as if there was no drop of blood left in her legs.

It was pure agony before even opening her eyes.

However, those weren't the issues guilty of her torment, oh no. A different, more torturous kind of pain shook her awake when it made its way from the pit of her empty stomach, rising through her gut and pouring her throat sour with acid. She pondered if this was what they called "digesting yourself"... The gruesome process was followed with sickening growls and petty moans of protest.

"_I will open my eyes and go to the kitchen. There I'll make and devour the world's biggest sandwich with all the fat juicy ingredients", _she assured herself, "_And then I'll laugh with my sis when I tell her about the craziest dream in my life. Yes, that's what it all was. A dream. Nothing more but a pigment of my overly Naruto-obsessive imagination._"

She confirmed her thoughts by twitching her head a bit (_she wasn't sure her neck would support a nod_) and peeked almost shyly through her lavish eyelashes. A swirling mass of trees and sky mixed in flashy colours of blue and green. Morning breeze on her pale cheeks and stiff neck. Warm body sprawled over her knees, successfully stopping circulation in her lower limbs.

"_Well shit…"_ she cursed and slowly, carefully slowly as to not bring herself any more than necessary pain, she lowered her head into its righteous position. Her temples pulsed loudly from the blood-rush, and her muscles throbbed when she stretched her arms high above her head. Her fingers made small popping noises as she cracked them against one another followed by disturbingly loud 'bang's her shoulders produced. She tried to wiggle her toes but it proved to bring no reaction from her feet.

Elisa watched Sandy lying over her legs motionless. She could see her breathing softly, otherwise she would've thought the girl died from exhaustion some time during the night. She also took a moment to marvel the fact that, for the first time in her entire life, she actually woke up before somebody else! Elisa was an exquisitely deep sleeper, you see_._

The corners of her lips curled into a gentle smile. She tenderly brushed a dark tress of hair with her fingertips from the girl's face. Sandy stirred up a bit but refused to acknowledge her presents any further. The older girl repeated her action, randomly poking the girl's cheeks, when her hand was sloppily slapped away.

"…mpfgh…tht… ticklesss…" the smaller girl mumbled drowsily and buried her face further in the fabric of Elisa's jeans. Elisa sighed and ruffled the girl's hair some more for good measure.

"Sandy honey, time to get up" she cooed raising her voice enthusiastically a few notes. Before, she could never understand the little buggers that were her brother and sister when they found amusement in ruthlessly waking her up. Well, now she knew why…

"…fyve… mhre minuthez Mamah…" came the muffled answer from the depths of her jeans. It was indeed very entertaining.

"No, Sand--" she caught herself, "Hana, seriously, you have to wake up".

"…… Whyyyy?" came a whining reply.

"Because my legs are numb?"

A snort.

"… tough luck… not good enough".

"Hana, I swear to Jashin that you will be carrying me piggy-back style the whole day if you don't get THE HELL up".

The thread issued one single eye to pop open to curiously peek at her.

"… Who's Jashin?"

"Errrrr…" Elisa thought for a moment, "…the hell, I don't have time for this". With that said she pushed the girl's side and practically rolled her off of her lap.

THUMP

"Ow ow ow OW!" the thirteen-year old was up and bouncing with her head in her hands, "What's wrong with you?! You were so gentle and, like, motherly last night!".

"Hope you didn't get used to it" Elisa retorted and started to craftily rub her legs from her thighs all the way to the ankles. It was a method they used after martial arts trainings to help the sore muscles function properly.

"Yeah well, ya know what?", Sandy grumbled, "Sometimes you're just plain weird, Miss Aka- Aka--"

"Akane" Elisa corrected and bit her lip to keep back a snarl. But Sandy was right, she thought. Yesterday Elisa experienced her most hated emotions, _shock_ and _confusion_, and completely lost her head. She felt ashamed when she recalled the way she reacted inwardly, but also a tinge of pride for her acting skills. Anyway… She was ungrateful when the girl saved her life and had lost her patience with her quite a few times. She embarrassed herself. She _allowed_ herself to feel helpless and weak. And then, in the end, she tried not to feel guilty by simply offering that same girl a false sense of security and comfort.

_What was happening to her?_ They've been in this world a little over 24 hours now and she was already acting so… so… Man, she had to get a grip...

"Yeah, that. Whatever you just said" Elisa was torn from her thoughts once more when Sandy replied, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly. Then the younger girl stiffened as she turned around herself, taking in her surroundings and gasping silently.

It was an awkward moment when they both realized that they weren't alone. In opposite to yesterday, wherever they looked the market was rippling with life. Old salesmen and women stood behind colorful-looking counters and shouted out to get the passenger's attention. The whole place smelled beautifully of fresh fruits. People were winding across the square, yelling and squirming. Occasionally somebody would stop and scrutinize them with a frown, clicking his/her tongue disapprovingly. The girls felt exposed and their cheeks burned from embarrassment. In their modern clothes they stuck out like a sore thumb. Also, Elisa noted, these people were probably here from the early morning hours. Conclusion: they must have seen them sleeping on that bench.

"_Like we're homeless… like we're beggars"_ she thought bitterly and clenched her teeth roughly, because that was _exactly _what they were here. She felt helpless again and was pissed at herself for allowing such an emotion to conquer her. She felt another eyes on her and all she wanted to do was scream for the people to stop _looking_, to stop _judging,_ to mind their own _fucking_ business! But she didn't because she knew that even if she did so, nobody would understand. Nobody would listen. She was just a strange girl, in strange clothes, speaking a strange language. So she swallowed her words, calmed herself down, and pretended she didn't sense their accusing looks on her shoulders.

"Ohayou onnanokotachi!" _Good morning girls!_

Startled and turning on their heels, the girls found themselves face to face with a familiar person. Plastic beads clanged gently when the woman lowered her head in a small bow. Her face, although worn out from old age, was brightened with the same toothless smile the girl met the day before. Elisa instantly felt the anger drain from her and returned the smile as politely as she could.

"O-Ohayou gozaimasu" _Good morning *_

"Yeah, Ohio! Errrrm, whatever she said…" Sandy mumbled.

The woman stood there staring unabashedly at them with an unblinking gaze.

Before Elisa had the time to contemplate her next sentence, the saleswoman put out her long thin hand (_sprinkled with ugly spots from the sun; long claws, not nails, buried under the layers of dirt) _and before Elisa knew what was even going on, there was something in her hands. It was rounds, smooth and cold. The girl opened her palms hesitantly and eyed the green object. It glittered in the sun in all its glory and Elisa felt her jaw drop. Her eyes watered from the sheer magnificence of it and she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful!

An _apple._

She felt like crying. From the corner of her eyes she could see Sandy gapping at the fruit in her own hands with the same awestruck expression she was sure her face held as well. Her eyes traveled up from the God-given food and she gazed at the old saleswoman. The woman's smile widened and she nodded her permission.

The girls greedily attacked the unfortunate fruits with their teeth, butchering them in the primal instinct of hunger. Elisa knew they probably looked like savages but didn't care, because it was food, because it was edible and because it felt _so darn_ good. And the taste was perfect and juicy to her, and she didn't care that it distinctly smelled of rottenness; she didn't care the core was dried up from wormholes and deep brown in colour.

The remains of the fruits were cast aside and Elisa closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the taste of it on her tongue, satisfied as she felt the pieces glide to her stomach and muscles squeezing them to mush. She opened her eyes and smiled at the old woman, a true smile devoid of awkwardness and fake politeness, and she didn't say 'Thank you' because the words would be an offense to the gratitude she felt.

Even while bathing in waves of bliss Elisa's brain refused to turn itself off. After all, it was in her nature (_a habit created with a help of her bossy mother_) to make mental-notes and systematically go through them till the end of the day. So she started with her priority...

_"Food-- check" _she ticked off the task from the very top of the list as she munched happily on her green prize.

_"Next: Acquiring useful information"._

While inspecting the town with Sandy yesterday, 'Akane' realized how much she overlooked their situation. Sure, she now knew for certain that they were in Naruto world, but _**where**__ exactly? (it was a whole damn __**world**__ after all) _Or even worse, _**when**_?

She didn't know anything about other dimensions! Heck, she was completely lost in time and space even at her own home!

Was she in Shippuuden that followed the manga? Or the latest anime episode? _Was she even in Shippuuden?!_

Her mind raced with all the possible scenarios. She kept her breathing steady in order to prevent the upcoming bubbles of panic.

Were they in time for Kakashi Gaiten? Or that time when the legendary Sannin were youths? Holy smokes, they could have appeared any time after the creation of The Valley of the End! _(not a comforting thought, seeing that that particular event took place about 100 years before Uzumaki Naruto was even planned...)_

There must have been something that gave of her thought, she was aware, because her elderly savior suddenly gave her complete attention, worry written in her every wrinkle.

"Doushita no shoujo-san?" _What is the matter girl? _she inquired with a note of suspicion entering her voice. This was her chance to answer the questions! Quickly forming the most complex sentence she could think of in Japanese, she took a deep breath and readied herself.

"Obaa-sama** michi ni mayotte shimaimashita" she stated. _Grandma, __**I'm**__ lost._ Elisa didn't know how to say '**We're** lost' so she improvised… yet again. Her vocabulary seriously shrunk- there were not many words she could use in a situation like this. She was pretty sure the beginner's sentences like _'The cat is black'_ or _'I'm drinking juice'_ were rather useless.

The woman gave her a sympathetic look and Elisa continued encouraged.

"K- Koko wa doko ni?" _W-Where am I?_

The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise and answered slowly, so the girls could pick up what she was saying (_Elisa felt relieved the woman acknowledged the fact that she didn't speak Japanese very well_):

"Koko wa Futari no machi da" _This is the town of Futari._

At Elisa's blank look she tried to explain further.

"Hi no kuni da?" _The Land of Fire?_

Elisa shook her head slightly. Even though she didn't find out anything particularly useful, she was relieved to know that they were _actually_ in the Land of Fire. A scary thought crossed her mind yesterday while they were looking for shelter. The two of them appeared at The Valley of the End, which was a border between The Land of Rice (Madara's statue) and The Land of Fire (Senju's statue). They could have easily wandered off in the opposite direction, directly to the Sound Village!

"_It looks like we were lucky…" _Elisa thought to herself and tried not to think about what could've happened, "_Very lucky indeed…_"

The old woman was talking again and Elisa didn't bother to translate when it was all gibberish to her ears. She just shook her head and repeated "Wakarimasen!" '_I don't understand!' _like a complete retard over and over again, until the old Grandma grew tired of her ranting. So she waved goodbye to them and started to go back to her nearby counter. That didn't cope well with Elisa's plans.

_"Not good! Need to ask her more questions..."_ she thought and shouted after the grandma's retreating form:

"J-Jotto matte kudasai***!" _Please wait!_

The old woman inclined her head over her shoulder, puzzled.

"Please don't leave! Please don't leave us, old hag! We need food!" Sandy pleaded beside her. Elisa hoped the older woman would at least acknowledge Sandy's desperate whiny tone, if she couldn't understand (_thank Goodness!_) anything of her English.

They were making quite a scene in the middle of the square. Other nosy salesmen whispered amongst themselves and pointed at them, but Elisa didn't really _give a damn_ what they thought. They were in need of help. They needed answers. She prayed the old woman caught on this much.

She cursed the fact that she couldn't voice her thoughts aloud, that she couldn't say what she wanted, that she couldn't call for help, but she prayed with every ounce of her being that the good old lady would understand her. She looked at Sandy by her side and knew they won't be able to live on like this, sleeping on benches, eating almost to none. They needed a chance. It didn't matter to her much it was Naruto world. It wouldn't matter if they were in Bugs Bunny's world for all she cared! All it mattered was that they were thrown into a world they weren't prepared for.

A world in which they could die.

She wouldn't let that happen to them. She vowed to keep Sandy safe. She had to.

The small square gradually went to its usual busy routine and they were ignored altogether once more. The old woman turned to face them completely. The girls waited with bated breaths as the woman blinked a few times, contemplating what to do with the two strange girls who tried to communicate with her through some alien language. This was all too much for her. She began to pack her bags. She would go home early today, have a calming cup of tea or two and rest her shaky bones...

"_Oh no you don't!_" Elisa put her tactic number 2 in motion. Signalling to Sandy to follow her, she strolled to the woman's counter and reached for the bags. The saleswoman's eyes went wide for a moment but then she realized the girls weren't going for thievery.

They were putting her fruits and vegetables into the basket. They were helping her pack.

"We are going to help you carry these home, ok? Ok!" Sandy stated in her usual happy-go-lucky chirp and then she turned to whisper to Elisa, "_Why in the world are we doing this?_"

_"Just follow my lead_" was the only reply from the older girl.

Upon discovering what they were doing, the woman nodded her head to them in gratitude. But she was even more surprised when the girls lifted her bags and signalled that they were going to carry them for her. A payback for food maybe?

So the confused old lady exited the square with two young girls following close behind her. She was glad they were such nice young kids, carrying the heavy bags for her, the sweethearts! And the younger one reminded her of her own granddaughter, too.

The trio turned a couple of corners further into the little town. In a couple of minutes they found themselves in front a house that was equally as ancient as its occupant. The old woman turned to get her bags from the girls and stopped. The girl stood miserably, the younger one looked at her with such an expression her heart hurt. They gazed at the house wistfully and the woman remembered seeing them asleep on a bench this morning. What kind of parent throws his child onto the street? Do these girls even have parents?

The grandma was baffled by the girls' appearance as well. Such strange clothes... And the older one said they were lost... Oh poor dear, she was so _thin_! And the younger one looked so sad... Oh, they looked like good kids. She could at least...

The old woman's thoughtful face split into a heart-warming smile. She turned a rusty key and opened the door to her home. Then she stood at the side and bowed her head towards the house.

"Douzo kodomotachi" _Please go ahead children_.

". . ."

"N-No way..." Sandy stared at the scene before her, eyes wide as saucers, "The anime-like puppy eyes actually worked?"

Elisa closed her gaping mouth and felt a smirk appear in the corner of her lips.

"Told you, you have a natural talent for it"

Elisa had just followed somebody home like a lost puppy. Which she was, in a way... She didn't know if she should feel proud of her 'accomplishment'. It _did_ cost her a bit of her pride and she felt like a manipulating bitch, poking the woman's humanity. Which in a sense she just had...

Great, she was gonna hate herself in the morning!

_"Shelter- check" _she scratched the word in her head and went over her list once more:

Food------------check

Information-------------- ?

Shelter--------------check

Language--------------??

Normal life---------------???

Step by step. Slowly. The girls approached the door. The woman's smile was kind and a little bit nervous. But so were they.

"Doumo arigatou gozaimasu obaa-sama" Elisa breathed. _Thank you so very much Grandma._

Elisa didn't know what to make of this whole event. They were invited in to do- what? Eat? Drink? Have a cookie? Sleep?

The woman observed them closely. _Who are these girls? What's the strange language? Where are they from?_

So many questions on both sides. They smiled to each other, hesitant and suspicious about their hasty decisions. They didn't know what to expect from one another really, but they did it anyway. _Because it felt like a right thing to do_. The old saleswoman knew that much.

"Makoto desu, shoujo-chan" _The name's Makoto, dear girl._

"Watashi wa Akane de, kanojo wa Hana desu. Hajimemashite." _I am Akane, the girl is Hana. So nice to meet you. _Elisa introduced politely and Sandy offered a small wave of 'hello'.

An honest smile later, they entered the house together.

**

* * *

Translation: Multa docet fames- Hunger teaches many.**

***Ohayou gozaimasu- Very polite and respectful; usually said to those above you (older people, teachers).**

****obaa-sama- While obaa means "Grandma", by adding an appropriate honorific you express your connection with that person, while the translations is more-or-less the same. --sama is the honorific of utmost respect and is very formal. **

***** kudasai- also a very polite adding to the sentence. Obviously, Elisa speaks the most formal and most polite Japanese, like they teach in courses.**

**

* * *

A/N: Sorry for being such a bore with all this Japanese. But I can definitely say that, starting with the next chapter, I'll only be writing in English.**

**Oh, yeah, this chapter's boring. No Naruto characters yet, yada yada yada. Well, the genre IS suspense, you never know when somebody's just gonna pop out of nowhere! That's the beauty of it! I think... xD But it's impoooortaaaaant! Very. Trust me.**

**I also wanna declare that the "Introduction arc" (as I call it) ends in two chapters and another arc begins. *bounces excitedly* ^___^**

**REVIEW PEOPLE! I get bored when you just add it to Faves or whatnot, I need to know what my readers like/dislike. I'm not asking much, just a few words, so don't be lazy darlings. xD**

**I blow you a kiss!**


	7. Tempus fugit I

**Chapter seven:**

**Tempus fugit I**

**(In constanti labore spes)**

**A/N: Sorry for not updating for the longest time. Winter vacation started earlier here in Serbia due to some new fancy-ass swine flu. It's epidemic, they said. So first I was tortured by my teachers who feared that they won't have enough time to give us tests (because, of course, they just HAD TO give us bloody tests xP) and then, when the winter vacation finally started, I got sick. Lovely, isn't it? Life's a b*tch. Thank Ra, it wasn't the deadly swine flu, but it had all the same symptoms (high fewer, coughing, slackness, etc) so I couldn't leave my pretty little bed to get down some writing. **

**Granted, I'm still sick, and will probably spent the New Year hugging my pillow and a cup of hot tea, but I promised to myself that I'll update at least two more chapters in 2009. They go together, like in a package, as you see by their titles (Tempus fugit I and II). So, here they are, and I hope you enjoy them. **

* * *

It was always said to be the most calming of the colours. And as always, Akane found it appropriate to argue.

"Annoying... stupid little... plant!" simultaneously with her last grunt, the filthy girl pulled with all her might and fell backward on her behind from the sheer intensity of it. Splashing right into the creamy brown pile of mud.

"Ha!" a pleased smirk crossed her muddy features and she glared at the persistent green offender she victoriously held. The weed fell limp in her hand, defeated, littering grains of dirt into her sweaty palm.

"Good, Akane-chan, good," the old wrinkled woman known as Makoto acknowledged, clipping a dead branch from a raspberry bush with dangerously looking scissors, "Now you can do what you just did to the rest of the garden! My, the weeds have completely taken over it, don't you agree dear?"

The girl raised her head and inspected the said garden. Green, green, more green. Weeds, weeds. Oh, and what was that? More weeds. From her position in the puddle, Akane could only narrow her eyes poisonously at the single plucked one.

"I. **Hate**. You."

The plant in question regarded her apathetically.

* * *

It was said to be the most soothing of the colours. One would think that being surrounded with greenery would lighten up a person's spirit. Make him feel vigorous, refreshed. Of course, Akane always had to be in contrast with the rest of the world. She found it aggressive and utterly ordinary.

"...lousy... idiotic... stubborn... green... monsters..." she cursed under her breath as the old woman cleaned her various blisters with sponge and warm water.

"Now now, Akane-chan, one would think Hana-chan and yourself got used to garden work," Makoto smiled, deep folds forming in the corner of her eyes, "I' m sorry for troubling you and the little one, but it's really been-"

"Don't apologize, Makoto-obaasama!" Akane protested, "It's the least we can do! You took us in... gave us food and a roof over our heads! Taught us-"

"Ah yes," the woman smiled as she began applying heavy-scented oil on the cuts, "I never thought I would teach a language to another child... And to think you are almost a young woman nonetheless! Your amnesia- is that what it's called?- is a very curious case indeed..."

The girl managed a week smile. After all the necessities were done and wounded flesh drank up the healing moisture, the girl bid the grandma a good night and retreated to her sleeping-room. Carefully stepping over her friend, Akane changed her baggy work-clothes (_she couldn't tell anymore if the clothes were brown to begin with from old dye or colored from constant mud_) and literally fell on her futon. The girl on the futon next to her wiggled a bit. She flipped in her dream and continued sleeping on the other side. Then she flipped again. Hana never got used to these Japanese make-shift beds. _'It's the same as sleeping on the floor' _she complained evenly every night, _'I can just hear the planks beneath me cracking whenever I turn'._

* * *

The day Makoto-obaasama invited them into her home was the luckiest day indeed, Akane remembered. The house was small and old, consisting of a kitchen cramped with pots and a shaky dinning-table, bathroom and two bed-rooms, one of which was Grandma's. The other one, which the girls shared, was fully furnished with a fine layer of dust covering the shelves. The patched teddy-bear clearly indicated that somebody else used to live here as well. However, the girls weren't able to seize their curiosity till half-a-year later when they started conversing in Japanese. The girls' suspicion about a mysterious owner of the room grew when Makoto presented them the next day with children school-books. Did the room belong to a child?

Ignoring the question for now, Akane devoted herself to studying Japanese. She explained the basics of the language to Hana as best as she could and knew. Contrary to Akane's beliefs and to her utter fascination, Hana progressed wonderfully. The younger girl wasn't very bright, but she proved she wasn't stupid either. While Hana couldn't learn by logic like her senior, she found an alternative and learned the language by memorizing the whole sentences. Later, when the school-books were finished and the basics were mastered, while Akane expanded her knowledge by devouring tons of other books, Hana felt ready to go into the streets and memorize the whole conversations! This resulted in Hana speaking the most informal Japanese (and expanding her vocabulary by quite a few swear words), while Akane spoke the most polite, most formal and most aristocratic form of Japanese (thus expanding her vocabulary by some complex and difficult words). Each girl struggled to learn the language using her qualities to it's best. Frankly, Hana was a talker and used that in order to catch up to Akane's knowledge. She never learned the proper use of Japanese honorifics, but it just made her look more friendly and honest through the eyes of the villagers*. Akane, however, proceeded to add the most respectable -sama honorific to Makoto's name. Even though the old saleswoman protested against it, Akane continued, seeing this as a way to show the old woman the gratitude she felt.

She fed them, gave them a place to sleep, water to drink, taught them the language, did domestic chores and all of this between taking care of the garden and going to the market. Makoto was old and sickly looking from living such a life without anybody's help, so the girls felt like they were just a burden more for the good old woman. Hence Akane persuaded her young companion to do something about that. They started helping out in the garden, which gave them more opportunities to practice their Japanese and socialize with the saleswoman.

They learned quite a bit. With the best of the knowledge of the language she possessed at the time, Akane tried asking questions in order to gain the next thing on her list: information. It's already been half-a-year, and even though she didn't feel like in Narutoverse (_more like being in a poor part of Japan_) she had to find out about the timeline. She noted (_with great disappointment_) that this info won't be very useful to her, seeing how she was completely cut off from the series' canon, but like every good Naruto fan she was equally curious just to know. She pondered for days how to formulate her question and not seem suspicious.

In the end, she asked the saleswoman who was the current Hokage in Konoha. "_Makoto-obaasama should know this," _she thought, "_even though I don't believe Futari villagers know much about what is going on so far away". _Fortunately or not, she was right. Makoto looked at her with one of those have-you-been-living-in-a-cave-looks before replying. She said that it's Godaime, the Fifth Hokage, Tsunade-sama. She also said that she's a fairly new Hokage, since Sarutobi-sama was killed defending the village from some rogue ninjas (_the peasant knew little about Sound's almost successful invasion, as Akane suspected_) approximately eight months ago. "_In fact"_, the old woman seemed to be deep in thought, "_Tsunade-sama was declared Hokage some time before you girl came to Futari". _With this new acquired knowledge, Akane banged her head against the wall trying to arrange the events of the timeline and their 'intrusion' into this world. So, after Tsunade became Hokage comes the 'Sasuke Retrieval Arc'. Man, those episodes were like a thousand years ago! She remembered the Sound Four and Kimimaro. Then, The Valley of the End and 'Naruto VS. Sasuke fight'. Bunch of fillers. The end.

Wait!

The Valley? She remembered that episode. It was awesome, but she clearly remembered criticizing with her friends the director's obvious attempt to make it as heartbreaking as he could. The rain falling on Naruto face, when it was sunny a moment ago, Sasuke staring at him and leaving, and suddenly- there's sunshine again! Come on! Talk about bizarre 'Hollywood-style' weather. And then she remembered herself saying the same thing half-a-year ago when she and Sandy found themselves in the very same Valley…

'_What kind of a bizarre weather is this?_… _the weeds beneath her were wet and sprinkled with raindrops and it confused her greatly_…'

"_Does… does that mean we appeared in the Valley of the End about the same time the battle ended?" _Akane tried to figure things out as she felt the beginnings of a migraine, "_No doubt about it, the timing fits perfectly. So that means that at the same time Hana, or rather Sandy, saved me, Kakashi was probably standing on the other side of the lake with an unconscious Naruto! Damn! If only the current didn't take us that far away from the statues!_" When she calmed herself down from such an atrocious disappointment (_she could have seen Kakashi damn it!_) she had to admit to herself that **that** wouldn't really be such a good idea. She didn't fully comprehend Japanese now, much lesser then! Not to mention shinobi were probably the most paranoid people alive that would have her and Sandy locked up and chained in an instant. Not a comforting thought…

When she finished wailing in self-pity, Akane continued her thinking phase. At least now she knew when they appeared. It's been half-a-year since then, which means…the ordinary Naruto series have ended! Hana and she have landed in **'the time of the blank screen'**, between the two parts of the anime, when nothing happened in the series. Naruto's with Jiraiya, Sasuke's with Orochimaru, Sakura's with Tsunade. Shippuuden was supposed to begin two and a half years later from that event, and six months have already passed, which meant that it will be starting in two years. Till then- nothing. And waiting. Akane growled. Why was she even thinking about this? She had no part in the story. She couldn't even **talk** properly for crying out loud!

Shaking her head furiously Akane ripped another weed from it's mother earth.

The old woman watched her concerned.

* * *

From then on, Akane's life went into a never-ending circle of studying the language and working in the garden. And it was exhausting. So when Hana complained about petty things like an old styled Japanese futon, all she could do was roll her eyes at the girl. Akane never had a problem with it. More often then not she was so tired that she didn't exactly care. And more often then not Hana was excused from their gardening job, due to regular muscle inflammation or early exhaustion, like today. Hence, Hana took over the job at the counter. Akane would grow the vegetables, water the fruit trees and carry the crops to the market, where Hana would sell them. Akane liked this arrangement: she knew she would absolutely FLIP if she heard another 'Eeek, I chipped a nail'.

It's been a year since they appeared in Narutoverse but Akane didn't pay much attention to that fact. She was pretty sure time went differently in this and Real World, but it was too confusing, so she quickly abandoned those thoughts. It's been a year and here she was, lying on a poor piece of furniture in a poor peasant house beside a friend that was as equally poor as her. She gazed at the ceiling and listened to the cracking noises the floor produced every time the other girl shifted. Above anything else at the moment, Akane felt guilty.

The moment they've learned to speak in Japanese half-a-year ago was not only the moment they got some answers. It was also a moment the questioning began. The moment she began lying.

_"Where are you girls from?" Makoto inquired casting a curious look at Hana._

_Akane quickly picked up why. Hana's skin tone. Not many people in Narutoverse had dark skin. The closest they could get to Hana's tanned Arabic skin was..._

_"Lightning country," Akane lied evenly as she recalled the Raikage and Killer Bee, "Though we don't remember much really."_

_Hana looked at her incredulously, but kept quiet otherwise._

_"Oh, you don't? How come?" the elderly woman looked appalled._

_Akane was ready for this question as well. She's been preparing for this for quite some time._

_"We have amnesia. I-I think..." she cursed her voice for wavering, but lying left a sour taste in her mouth._

_"We do?" Hana's eyes went wide in confusion. What the hell was Elisa talking about?_

_"Amnesia? I've heard of this so called 'amnesia', but you'll have to refresh my memory, dear…"_

_Akane sighed in relief for their good luck. Seeing as Makoto-obaasama spent her whole life in a distant peasant village, she wasn't exactly educated in biology. She continued:_

_"Well, that's exactly it. It's a decease that affects memory. That means that we can't remember anything from our past-"_

_"Yeah, so there's no point in asking us!" Hana seemed pleased with herself. _

_"Oh, you mean all your previous knowledge is lost for you forever? How awful!"_

_"Right, so that's why we forgot the language. Learning language is a life-long process of studying it. It's a knowledge you acquire, because a human is not born with it. So when we lost knowledge about customs and our actions, we also forgot our…native… language."_

_"Oh, so that's why you spoke in those silly incoherent sounds when we met? My, how frightening! To think that one can forget how to speak!"_

_Hana caught Akane's gaze, thinking: 'That's not how amnesia works!'. Akane gave her a warning look._

_Don't. Say. A Word._

_"What a horrible, horrible disease!" Grandma shook her head sympathetically when an idea occurred to her, "Do you at least remember your parents?"_

_Akane felt her heart freeze._

_"No."_

_Such a liar. She's been dreaming about them every single night._

_"Kami-sama..." the woman sighed, "You dears are really all alone here… Just as I am since my granddaughter disappeared..."_

_It took them a moment to register the last sentence._

_"Woah, your granddaughter? Was that her room?" Hana questioned._

_"What happened to her?" Akane asked sternly, hushing the other rambling girl._

_The old woman seemed like the memory was bringing her physical pain. She closed her eyes tightly, and her arm trembled as she murmured:_

_"She was so young... and now she's gone... just like so many..."_

_Hana and Akane looked at each other. So many?_

_"Kiki, my granddaughter, was a lovely young girl. She looked a lot like you," she smiled warmly at Hana, "and then, one night, she disappeared."_

_Hana licked her lips nervously: "Did... did they look for her?"_

_Makoto shook her head: "Over the past ten years, lots of youths went missing. Nobody ever did anything about it. The village has been neglected by the rest of the world. Villagers speculated that the younglings abandoned the village of their own accord."_

_"What?" Hana was shocked, "Why would they say something like that?"_

_Makoto sighed and explained further: "They speculated that the children were never very content with the way old Futari worked. Hard physical work isn't something the kids would devote their lives to. So the villager's theory was that children, being children, left to find easier life somewhere else."_

_The room went silent for a second._

_"Well that's a bunch of bull!" Hana exclaimed._

_"I agree," the old woman smiled, "Kiki would never leave the town without telling me. She was a hard-working girl, she was."_

_"But then, what happened?" Akane questioned aloud, "What happened with all the young people? They couldn't have just disappeared, could they?"_

_"I don't know" Makoto-obaasama admitted, "I... really don't know. But I do know that, counting you two, there are about six teenagers in the whole village. Futari is meant to die from age with its inhabitants..."_

Akane lay in her make-shift bed and thought about everything they've been through so far. Guilt was eating her up from the inside of her belly. _Such a liar. She was such a __**liar**__. _Makoto-obaasama was a kind woman who did everything for them. And she lied to her in the face. She told herself that there was no other choice. There really wasn't. She couldn't just say: "Hi, we are from another world in which _your_ world is just a pigment of Mr. Kishimoto's imagination. Nice to meet ya!" She was doing it for the best. To protect herself and Hana. Especially Hana. It's been really tough for the little megaphone…

It'd been a whole year. She and Hana learned to speak the language almost fluently. It took Hana a while to get used to calling her Akane and herself Hana, but the girl was full of surprises. Akane proudly ticked of the lines 'Language' and 'Information' from her mental list. Now all it was left was the one that said "Normal life". _Soon_, she though and smiled. Her palms arched and tingled, and she could almost feel the damaged skin being replaced with the new smooth one. Her muscles pulsed from exhaustion and soon her eyes closed as well. _Soon._

* * *

Tomorrow morning her ears were met with a scream, crashing through her dream like a glass. She jumped to her feet in an instant, frightened and ready to sprint to the room where the scream came from. Before she had the time to fumble completely out of the sheets, there was a loud sound of footsteps, running, and Hana crashed into their bedroom, panting and her face twisted in horror.

"Makoto…" she shrieked and panicked trying to get as much air as she could in her lungs at the same time, "Makoto! Hurry!"

Akane got the message, grabbed the girl's arm and speeded out of the room. They ran to the old saleswoman's bedroom and stopped at the sight. Hana began to cry, tears streaming down her face and staining the dirty carpet. Akane's first reaction was stupor.

Nothing was out of the ordinary really. Why was Hana crying? Makoto was sleeping in her bed. Her face was a gentle mask of bliss like in a very pleasant dream. She was comfortably tucked in warm sheets. She seemed so serene. So peaceful.

…She wasn't breathing.

Cold. She seemed so cold. Languid. Her cheeks were white like a freaking chalk. Like she was… no… please, no… she was…

"She is dead, Akane! She is dead!"

. . .

* * *

**Translation: Tempus fugit- Time flies.**

**In constanti labore spes- Hope lies in constant work.**

***In Japan, when you don't use an honorific with a person's name, that means you are either being rude to that person, or that you two are close friends. So when a friendly looking girl like Hana/Sandy does so, people view it like the second option and don't really mind.**

**A/N: Background colour: green, which represents the 'Heart chakra' (emotion, compassion, love). **

**When my sis finished reading this chapter she said: "Yup, this is awesome an' all but… Why did you kill the Granny, b*tch?". The answer is simple: I had to! That's how the story goes. I'm not happy about that, but that is life. Let's all have a minute of silence for my third OC that had a name AND who lived through the whole 3 chapters. Thank you.**

**- - - - - - - - - - - - - - minute passed- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -**

**Please don't think of me as a murderer and proceed to the next chapie. But don't forget to review this one as well, please. Need to know what'ya think. *wink***


	8. Tempus fugit II

**Chapter eight:**

**Tempus fugit II**

**(Labor non onus, sed beneficium)**

**A/N: I hate snow-less winters…**

* * *

"What's gonna happen with the house?" Hana asked timidly, wiping her tears with a tissue.

Akane led them outside of the graveyard and breathed deeply. The air was fresh and void of the smell of death. It smelled like rice. Her chin trembled for a moment, before she drew in a ragged breath and blinked the haze out of her eyes. "I don't know Hana. It'll go to some relatives, probably."

Hana thought for a while as she tried to keep up with Akane whose rage with the situation seemed to manifest through her feet. She was practically sprinting.

"Maybe old Makoto left **us** the house" she suggested, thinking she found a solution to their new problem. _Where ever were they supposed to live now_?

Not slowing her pace, Akane stomped down the street with the girl barely following behind. She shook her head, "No, I don't think she did. Or, more likely, she **couldn't**. She couldn't have put our names on a legal document of any kind."

Hana lifted a dark eyebrow, failing to comprehend.

"We don't have any sort of document that proves we even exist, Hana," Akane explained, "Heh, we don't even have a surname! If Makoto-obaasama had named us her rightful inheritors, there would have been a whole legal process with people who don't, apparently, exist. If the word was out, what do you think, how would the villagers react?"

"They would think we are criminals or something?" Hana guessed.

"Exactly."

The girls, again homeless, were sliding down the streets of Futari once more. Hana didn't want to sleep on the street again. She really didn't. But if they couldn't stay in that house anymore…

"Don't worry," Akane reassured Hana as if reading her mind and the younger girl caught that warm motherly-like smile she had so rarely on the senior girl, "I've thought about this scenario already."

"You knew she was going to die?" Hana asked in disbelief.

"Eventually," Akane replied, "but not so soon. She was old, Hana. Old people die. Makoto-obaasama was 91."

Hana's jaw dropped, "You're shitting me!"

"Watch your tongue," she warned. Great, Hana maybe left out from her sentences the 'like's and 'totally's (out of the simple fact that Japanese didn't have equivalents to those) but she was starting to swap them with swear words.

"Yes, mother," Hana rolled her eyes at the patronizing tone, "So, anyway, what did you have in mind? Did you find an abandoned house or something? Just please don't let it be a barn! I told you once, and I'll tell you again: I am NOT sleeping in a fucking ba-"

"We're here."

The younger girl looked up. There, above their heads hung a familiar sign. A sign with a knife and a fork.

* * *

The name was Ken, he told them.

The old geezer looked the same as when they first met him: a big round stomach from beer, yellowed teeth, almost bald head with bushes of black hair on both sides of it. His most noticeable feature- little black mouse-like eyes that made him look good-naturedly.

The fact was that he was indeed a good man. Once looking pass his extremely… untidy appearance, one would find a real fuzz- ball. However, Hana never took anything from him without dipping it three times at least in water and disinfectant soap.

The thing Akane found most endearing abut the old man was without a doubt his way of talking. Ken didn't talk. He barked. His laughter was deep, loud and even unpleasant at the times. It made people piss their pants. She recalled when she talked to him the first time. And he was only mildly irritated then.

Speaking of their first get-to-know-each-other, Ken was very reluctant about giving them the job. He remembered them the moment they entered his inn. _'I never forget a face,' _he informed them. He also told them that he didn't like brats who played jokes on him. When the girls said they didn't understand, he reminded them of their 'conversation' the last time. So Akane once more had to pull out the violins and the amnesia-explanation out of her pocket and, luckily, the uneducated bartender believed the story. He even cried a little.

Yup, that was Ken. A raw strong man with a heart of a teddy-bear. He gave them the job. Ken knew Makoto, just like everybody knew everybody in Futari, and exclaimed that she had been _'a sweet old hag'. _The deal was this: the girls would both work in the bar, in different shifts, as he didn't really need much help managing the few usual drunkards or occasional travelers. They would also do all the domestic work (this one was Akane's idea because of the diner's obvious condition), mop, clean and occasionally cook. In return, the girls would get to use one of the spare rooms, the less furnished, cheapest one, and a small salary each. It was a good deal so long as they had a roof over their heads, Akane thought. Although the girls weren't initially pleased with the amount of money they would be getting, Ken explained that he couldn't give them more. After all, he was a poor man himself.

* * *

So the time flew by and the girls grew older and higher. The change wasn't as evident on Akane as it was on Hana. The little thirteen-year-old was almost a fifteen-year old now. Akane's predictions were right: Hana grew into a beautiful young lady. Her body gradually developed and curved into a perfect figure, especially for such a young girl. She now stood the same height as her two-year-older friend and Akane could swear the girl weighted more then her. Her legs were long and tanned, and arms smooth and delicate. Her lips were full and lush. Her lashes were long and attractively dark. She kept her black hair the same length- to the middle of her back. The second thing that didn't change was her eyes- they held the same naïve and unhandled energy in her flower-structured-irises.

Akane on the other hand changed more inwardly than outwardly. She grew a bit in the height, but was still as skinny and weak-looking as ever. Her once expressively pale complexion became pinker from the time she spent in the garden under the blazing sun (_she cursed the Land of Fire's hot weather repeatedly in those months_) with blotches of healed sun-burns. She curved a bit, but nothing noticeable. Seeing as her soul changed the most, her eyes changed as well. Olive dots that spotted her jewel-structured-irises grew bigger, making her eyes appear green at times. Her long hair grew even longer until it touched beneath her bottom. It got in the way a lot, so Akane started braiding it in one single long plait. Hana suggested cutting it, which Akane refused.

Two years had passed since they came to this world, as well as a whole year since Makoto-obaasama died and they started living in the inn. Ken was a good employer and paid them generously, but Akane calculated that it wasn't enough for food and other necessities. Hana didn't help much. When she 'discovered' she was beautiful, the first thing she bought with her entire first salary was a big wall mirror from some merchant that stopped in the bar for a drink. Akane tried talking to her, but Hana defended saying that she didn't eat much so she could afford it.

So Akane went into the streets to find a part-time job. She always took the forenoon shift, as Hana didn't want to get up at five in the morning_, _and spent the afternoon cleaning houses as a maid. She cleaned the bar spotless with her two hands and opened the windows to let the smoke out. Being one of a few young people in Futari turned out to be a good advantage: all the elderly people needed a pair of strong arms and legs. She scrubbed, she went to grocery, she cooked and most of the older inhabitants paid her nicely for helping them out. She smiled, thanked them and was polite, constantly impressing the villagers with her mannerism and speech, but on the inside she was bitter and resentful and hurt. She was eighteen years old and she had been living like the poorest soul in this world for the previous two years. It wasn't so much the money that mattered to her, event though it did, but she couldn't help but feel like this was all somehow below her. It was egocentrically to think that way and she knew that, but she couldn't even begin to describe the feeling she got when she remembered her past.

A straight A-student and a prized pupil. Black belt in aikido and a winner of golden prizes. A talented musician and an artist, recognized by many. Speaking three languages fluently. And she could have been so much more. Akane had had many, oh so many plans. They said she had ambition like very few have. She wanted to study languages and travel the world, and now it was nothing but a mere dream.

Look at her, taking care of old people like a nurse! Serving drinks. Taking care of **a child**. Because no matter how old she claimed to be, Hana would always be just a child in Akane's mind. She walked the streets of a peasant town of Futari and kicked the dirt with her torn sandals, humming a song from her own world. Her gratitude for the little things and everything she had was soaked in anger for everything she had had and could have had, before it was ripped away from her.

"_My shadow's only one that walks beside me, my shallow hearts the only things that's beating, Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me, Till then I walk alone," _she sang in her mind, in a moment foolishly afraid that she forgot English.

The worst was the loneliness. She had friends back home. She had family. Here, she had a friend named Hana who spent most of her time hanging out who-knows-where with the boys from the village and with whom she couldn't talk without starting to bicker almost immediately. With her next salary, Hana bought a nice flower-patterned yukata* and make-up. Akane didn't dare ask how much it cost her.

* * *

Hana liked talking about her relationships. Akane didn't have much time to talk with anybody due to her 9 hours of work, so she enjoyed listening to her young friend and indulged her in those conversations. For a while at least. There were only as much 'And he was so cute and I could see he was completely in love with me' as she could take. In the end, on her part of conversations were all the 'Aha's and 'Mmm's she could mumble while Hana talked for the tenth time about some silver-haired guy (_'Oh my God, he's not even old and it's his natural colour! Hot!'_) she was oh-so-madly in love with. Akane listened until the part when the girl talked about how he wasn't from the Futari unlike all of her previous boyfriends and how he was only going through the village, when Akane's concentration seriously shrank and she made up a story about a job she forgot to do.

"_I'm walking down the line that divides me somewhere in my mind, on the border line of the edge and where I walk alone," _Akane sang, "_I walk alone, I walk alone_"

With her next salary, Akane bought her first book from a traveling book merchant. If there was a good thing about living in a bar, it was that it was a place travelers actually _visited_. Futari was situated on parting ways of three routs, one of which, she found out, lead to Konoha (as she suspected), the other Rice Country (as she feared) and the third to the Lightning country (that supported nicely her story about their place of birth). Because of the inn's magnificent location, Akane should have been less surprised when some ninjas came to the bar to rest from their travels.

Fortunately or not, the ninjas were always some random people, clearly not important to the plot and so not even screened in the anime. Akane felt relieved, but there was a tinge of disappointment as well. Ninjas were edgy people, she learned. Rude, too. They were always impatient and hurrying her up. They often boasted that they had 'very important missions' and winked shamelessly at her. Needless to say, Akane ignored them. Most of them were ugly anyways. Kishimoto-san did them no favors. Even though the ninja visits were mostly unpleasant and tense, they were always short and rare. Akane didn't know if she should look forward to those or be saddened by them. On one hand, they proved to her that she was indeed in the Narutoverse, because it didn't feel like it most of the time, but on the other hand, it felt like a provocation from the heavens. Akane constantly felt as if they were just taunting her to go to Konoha and blow up her cover.

Of course, she wasn't stupid enough to do that. Even if she convinced Hana to go _(_which wouldn't have been a hard thing to do- the girl has been whining for days how she would like to leave Futari and meet some new boys) it would have taken them about seven days to get there. Not to mention that they would be walking through the woods swarming with wild animals and possibly robbers and rogue-ninjas. And even if they got there safe and all their belongings intact, the gatekeepers would never let them enter it. After all, they had no documentation whatsoever.

No, Akane concluded, taking on that travel would just be stupid. She thanked to a higher presence that she was born with a stronger mind than a heart, which was, by the way, screaming to her to go to bloody Konoha and find herself an adventure!

* * *

Another month passed and life went as usual: Hana was going out with the village boys or even occasionally with somebody that was only passing through the town. Akane was working her ass off, but she discovered she was somewhat happy. She was still upset, naturally, especially when she figured she couldn't see any perspective for herself, nor find any new ambitions to cover for her lost ones. There wasn't much to do in Futari except to work and read books she kept buying one by one with hard-earned money. She needed a purpose dammit! She _needed_ an ambition. She needed something to do with herself. Nevertheless, living in Futari was becoming a habit she was rather starting to enjoy.

One evening she went behind the diner and buried her and Hana's cellphones. The devices were long rendered useless when the battery ran out, but the girls had kept them, as something that sued to connect them to their world. Now, Akane dug a deep hole with her bare hands, as she couldn't risk anybody seeing her with a shovel and finding out about funny-squared-objects. Her fingertips stung but she paid no attention to it. Her pain tolerance had risen by a few points ever since she started gardening with Makoto-obaasama. She laid the phones in their symbolic graves and looked down on them. "Rest in pieces, guys." Then she took apart the phones, taking out the battery and cards, just in case, and ceremonially covered them with earth. _Goodbye technology._ Akane was aware she had just buried a piece of herself. That cellphone was a piece of her previous life. It was a reminder. It connected her to her world. But she had to move forward. In order to survive. To live. She learned that too, amongst many things. She couldn't risk anybody finding out about their past.

Akane went back to the diner, noting that Hana was still working the latest hours of her afternoon shift. She greeted the girl upon entrance when she noticed something strange. There was a red tinge on the girl's cheeks and she was breathing heavily. She didn't look too well..

"He's here…"Hana said in a strange voice and led her to the small kitchen behind the bar table. Ooookay, she was freaking her out. Was she drunk?

"Who's here?" Akane questioned calmly and watched as the girl's face flushed even further. Now she was getting really worried.

"Him.. You now, the dreamy guy I told you about?"

Oh, so this was about a guy? How ridiculous. Akane breathed out the air she was holding, discretely.

"Which one?" she asked nonchalantly, a note of mock entering her voice. Of course, Hana didn't notice it.

"The one with the silver hair," the younger girl said, giggling.

"Um, remind me," Akane said in a lack of anything better to say. Hana's eyes shone with excitement.

"Why don't you see him for yourself? He's right here. He's sitting with his friends in the dining part," she was blabbering as she pulled her through the door, "He's so hot, you have no idea! He promised me he'll come back when I first met him those months ago and he did! All for me! I just know he's MAD about me!"

As they turned around the corner, Akane desperately tried to make a grab at anything they passed to stop herself from being dragged in by her passionate friend. In the end, seeing that resistance was futile, she gave up and let the fifteen-year-old lead the way. When they approached the dining part of the inn, Akane cast a look at the quiet room where 'Mr. Hotness' was apparently sitting and... she almost felt her jaw drop.

Ninjas.

There sat a group of shinobi dressed clad in gray soldier clothing with patterned scarves around their necks. The aura they emitted… was dangerous. They all had full-face black masks, leaving only their eyes unclothed. All of them, except for one. His silver hair was done in a pony-tail and as he made a motion with his hand, the glasses on the bridge of his nose glimmered under the artificial lighting if the diner. Akane felt her blood run cold as the same time the man turned to them and made eye-contact with her. He waved good-naturedly to them, his lips forming a pleasant smile that was so wrong, because it was so in contrast with his personality.

Murderers shouldn't smile.

"Isn't he cute?" Hana's voice was whispering in her ear heatedly, "And look, he's saying hello. Told ya he's mad about me…" She giggled some more, her breath fuming in Akane's ears. She felt her throat go dry.

"_There is one thing Hana was right about…"_

Her fingers felt as if she had dipped them in freezing water. Shock.

"_This guy IS mad."_

There, at the table across her, was sitting one of the people she never thought or hopedshe would ever meet.

Right there, staring at her and smiling so encouragingly was none other than Yakushi Kabuto.

* * *

**Translation: Tempus fugit- Time flies.**

** Labor non onus, sed beneficium- Work is not a burden, it's a welfare.**

***yukata- Japanese traditional garment; summer kimono made of cotton.**

* * *

**A/N: Whaaaaat?! OMR the first character they met is Kabuto?! What OC in the world meets Kabuto the Four-eyed Henchman first? Well, I did NOT expect this from myself…**

**Oh yeah, I'm unpredictable. Hear me roar.  
**

**I officially announce the 'Introduction arc' has ended. Let the games begin.  
**

**HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY! May all your wishes come true! I wish you the happiest 2010 ever from the bottom of my heels! (which is where my heart is ^^) **

**Lots and lots of love,**

**from Yours truly. **


	9. Aliud est celare, aliud tacere

**Chapter nine:**

**Aliud est celare, aliud tacere**

**A/N: Merry Christmas tomorrow to whoever celebrates it on this date! Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to xMissFortune. **** Love ya! *****pokes you in the forehead in a very Itachi-ish way* **

* * *

_This is not happening, it can't be happening, this is not happening, it can't be happening, this is NOT- _

The mantra repeated itself over and over ominously.

The long-haired girl stared at the man on the other side of the room for a few moments, dumbfounded. The little processor in her head was bugging, franticly going off and on. She went frozen in place in shock.

Lights on...

Lights off...

Light's on...

Her mind shut down.

"Tee hee, I told you he's hot, you don't have to rape him with your eyes," Akane flinched when Hana snickered in her ears, snapping her out of her daze, "Don't forget, I called the dibs on him first!"

Akane turned on her heel to glare at the younger girl, horrified by the mere implication of such a thing! On the first sight of life renewing in her cold limbs she grabbed Hana firmly by her wrists and pulled her out of the room, back to the kitchen. It had gotten difficult to breathe so suddenly that the girl could hardly see in front of her straight. Undone thoughts wrecked havoc in her head.

Disbelief. Confusion._ Fright._

"Are you completely** insane**!" Akane hissed into the girl's pretty face before she could stop herself, "Do you have _any_ idea who that guy is?"

At this, Hana tilted her head to the side a bit, confused by Akane's offense if it was to judge by her disturbed face. She slowly blinked with her dark eyelashes. Then, she grinned from ear to ear and replied like it was the most obvious answer in the world, "Of course I do! He's the most beautiful guy I've seen in a looong time! A true hunk of-"

"I **don't** need to hear you finish that sentence!" Akane almost shrieked. _Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly. _She lowered her voice to an urgent whisper, "Hana, that guy's one of the villains in the story. He's a... bad person to be around." _And **that**'s a serious understatement._

For a moment, the dark-skinned girl seemed to contemplate the new information. Gradually, as if realization was finally seeping into her brain, Hana's thoughtful expression faded from her face. Akane waited impatiently in silence.

But then the corners of the younger girl's lips twitched into a smirk; and not into any kind of a smirk, but an affectionate, sultry one.

"Oh? So Kabuto's a **bad** boy really, isn't he?" Hana giggled and Akane felt like slapping a palm over her face. Or better yet, Hana's face. _What the hell has gotten into this girl!_

_Stay calm. Breathe in…_

"Quit fooling around! Have you been listening to anything I've just said?" it took her all the self-control she had not to put her hands on Hana's shoulders and shake her like a rattle. Again she gave it a try, almost desperately, "Listen, the guy's a bad person. I'm telling you, he is one of the antagonists in the story!"

_You can't tell her all the details you know,_ the rational voice of her mind reminded her_, She may not be able to keep her mouth shut and will get you both in trouble…_

"Does he want to conquer the world?" Hana asked icily.

...Akane was caught off guard with such a direct question. Automatically she answered, uncertain, "Well, n-no-"

"Does he wanna kill everybody?"

"Not really, but-"

"Does he kick puppies in the streets or aspire to kill the main character of the story?" the younger girl interjected again.

"No, Hana, NO, he doesn't, but-"

"Then what's the problem?" Hana tapped her foot impatiently as she, confident, stated her point, "What I mean is, I'm obviously in no danger of him- he's been _nothing_ but nice to me this whole time."

Akane gaped at her at a loss of words. _Kabuto was nice to her once and everything's peachy now? A freaking Queen of logic, that's what she is! I simply love it when people make sense like this..._ the frustrated sarcastic voice hissed in her mind._ So… so… naïve! Is this girl for real?_

"Hana," Akane exhaled through her noise, irritated, "Anime villains are not as simple as you think they are." She glanced over her shoulder nervously in search for eavesdroppers, "Their goals and personalities are usually more complex than the old western 'rule over the world' one-way of thinking." Hana opened her mouth to say something but Akane continued, not allowing her to speak, "No, you listen to me now! They are-"

"Oh will you stop with all your lecturing already?" Hana managed to bite out and Akane inwardly cringed at the tone, "Stop with all the philosophy crap and first meet the guy. You are so… prejudictied!"

"Prejudiced."

"Whatever!" Hana growled out and crashed a serving plate with cups, bottles and sandwiches right into her stomach, to which Akane's hands instinctively outstretched to hold it up, "There. Table number one! Chop-chop. Go."

Hana pushed her with her elbows out of the kitchen and somewhere along the way Akane wondered when had the teenage girl become so… angry with her. Did she already like the medic that much? Carefully moving across the room, Akane noticed with dismay _(fear)_ that the table number one was actually the table occupied by Kabuto and his ninja pack.

_...crap. _She turned back, looking for a way out of this predicament, when she saw a snickering Hana at the doorframe.

The realization hit her: the little puck set her up! There was no way she could whisk back into the kitchen now and not come off as suspicious or make an ass out of herself... She would have to do this. She would really have to do this.

_It's ok, I am not gonna slip, _she took a deep, optimistic breath, _Everything's going to be just fine. Just fine.  
_

Nodding to herself, Akane walked forward in long confident steps, acting as naturally as she could. _He doesn't know who I am,_ she felt encouraged just the tiniest bit, _And he has absolutely __**no idea**__ that I know that he is a sadistic doctor who cuts up human corpses in evil underground lairs._

She swallowed a nervous gulp.

_Nope, none whatsoever._

For a moment, Akane felt like laughing at the absurdity of the situation: if anybody had ever told her that one day she would be serving food and drinks to an imaginary Naruto character, she would've asked him what happy-little-pill he was on. As the young waitress neared the table, the ninjas stopped their low conversation. Without any pretense, they looked her up and down, not even bothering to be discrete. _Assholes. _Akane felt violated, but she kept her head high. Good grief, she was _really_ starting to hate ninjas. _Perverted boasting little..._ her dignity wiggled in anger.

There were three of them, excluding Kabuto, and they were wearing metal-plates with a note sign on their foreheads. Sound forehead protectors, Akane concluded. She couldn't see Kabuto's, but she assumed he wore it around his leg, or waist, or something.

"Your orders," she stated simply. The cups on the tray clicked against one another as she set it down and started sorting the drinks on the table. Akane bit her lip; it all felt so horribly awkward. The best course of action would be to just _keep her goddamned mouth shut_ and go away. From her peripheral vision she caught a glint of glasses reflecting off the light- Kabuto seemed to be watching her intently as well.

This made her almost hysterically nervous.

Finishing up as quickly as her jelly-like hands allowed her, Akane thanked every holy being she wouldn't have to wait for the money. It was a policy to take the money before service, at least from ninjas. Ken couldn't stand the sight of them, like most of the villagers. _'Justa buncha paid killers working for the government, that's what they are,' _the old man would say and let Hana and her handle the visiting shinobi. Ken also held a grudge for the country, the world, and Konoha especially for 'tempting away the Futari children with its ridiculously flashy stories of adventures and other fairy-tales', like the popular belief was. The old Futari habitant didn't trust them one bit.

_Act naturally. You are just a waitress serving drinks. Nothing more._ With this in mind, Akane set the last bottle on the wooden table. Her customers kept very silent, eerily almost. Or maybe they just didn't want to discuss anything in front of her? It was as if the ninjas were sniffling the air for something. The girl turned to leave for the kitchen, but then-

An airy male voice spoke from beside her, "I'm sorry if I'm being rude, but are you perhaps Akane-san*?"

...she stopped dead in her tracks.

_Shit, _Akane swore in her mind before turning to meet a pair of black eyes.

A pair of eyes that belonged to a certain medic ninja who was waiting patiently for her answer now.

While she was being awkwardly silent.

_You are just going to answer the question, _the eighteen-year-old calmed herself, feeling like she was about to talk to stranger in some language she didn't understand, _It would be impolite not to do so. Don't think about what you know. _Apparently, when you try not to think about something, it has the same effect as having a hippopotamus in your living room and trying not to look at it.

"Yes, that's me," she threw a well-exercised smile on her face. _So far so good. _Then she added, carefully, "And then you must be Kabuto-san. Is it safe to assume that the other girl, Hana, familiarized you with my name?"

The medic-nin smiled a charming, boyish smile at her, "You are right. Although I see the familiarity is vice-versa."

_Tell him off,_ Akane thought,_ that's what I should do- I should say something dismissive and get the hell out of h-_ "It is indeed," the neutral statement left her lips and she cursed herself for giving him the opportunity to continue the conversation the moment she realized this. Oh she_ so_ felt like killing a particular little girl right now.

With an agreeable nod, Yakushi Kabuto looked her straight into the eyes, "Tell me Akane-san, are you her best friend? The little Miss spoke only the best of you. Any friend of Hana-chan's is a friend of mine."

Hana-_** chan****_? The little Miss? What- what-what was that? _What's with all the familiarity?_ Akane felt like banging her head on the table for not having payed more attention when Hana had talked about her first meeting with 'the silver-haired guy' those few months ago. How well were they conversant with each other? Kabuto,_** Yakushi Kabuto**_ calling her –chan was just…

Even so, the air around the two of them was strangely light. Other than the tension in her muscles, which also seemed to be slipping away by the moment, everything was very casual and calm. And that exact same Kabuto... was oddly pleasant, Akane was surprised. He was very… genial and well-mannered. Not what she had expected in the least. She dared say that it was rather _nice_ talking to him. It felt nice to talk to someone educated and interesting: someone so different than the Futari villagers. She felt her resolve softening against herself.

"Oh no, I'm not her best friend," Akane unconsciously shook her head in the same lighthearted motion he had, her long plait rolling down her back.

_You need to get a grip, _that rational part of her brain warned her, _This guy is dangerous. You have to keep him away from Hana until he leaves._

Akane inclined her head toward the kitchen.

"I'm her older sister," the girl said warmly, making sure there was a recognizable defensive note in her tone growling _**Stay away**__. _She faced Kabuto again and he merely smiled in acknowledgement. His smile didn't reach his eyes, Akane noticed.

They remained cold and calculating.

She made a mental note to be extremely careful what leaves her mouth next. This guy was definitively trouble.

"Oh? I didn't realize," the medic admitted and motioned to his ninjas to continue their conversation without him. For the first time since she came up to their table, the Sound underlings shifted their attention from her to their food. Kabuto, on the other hand, seemed rather eager to give her all of his.

"You don't look anything alike," he commented further, honestly.

_...since when have I started thinking that anything Kabuto says is **honest**? _Akane pinched herself lightly on the arm, appalled with herself. _Just when did I get so comfortable around him?_

But she did. There was a sort of lulling aura about him. Like one can trust him. It was a feeling of security most people get at their trusted doctor's. It was a feeling she _did not_ wish to have around _this_ particular one._  
_

"We are not sisters by blood, Kabuto-san," she explained politely, shaking her head to get rid of the trail of thoughts. Was it just her or had it gotten much cozier? It felt good, but her distrustful nature wouldn't let her put her guard down. A useful thing, she would find out later. "We are just very close."

_Need to stay indifferent. Need to keep my mind working._

The medic-nin made an "Ah-ha" sound and moved a chair to her with his foot. "Would you like to sit down if you're not too busy?" he gave her another unobtrusive smile, "We can get to know each other. Perhaps you can tell me about this lovely village… or Hana-chan and yourself?"

". . ."

He shouldn't have said the last sentence.

_Like hell I will! _The defensive part of her kicked her in the gut. Flashing alarm bells rang into her ears, screaming, as if trying to make them inwardly bleed.

Outwardly, however, Akane's lips split into a small graceful smile. "I'm afraid I have a lot of work to do in the kitchen." _Yeah right, get the hell away from here!_ "Though I do thank you for your kind offer, Kabuto-san."

The medic's face remained a friendly smile, but she could swear she saw something change in his eyes. Something indescribably cold.

"A pity then."

"Have a pleasant day, Kabuto-san."

Akane turned, feeling drained and dizzy, and walked back to the little kitchen where Hana was waiting for her. She thought her 'slow, insuspicious exit out of the room' seemed too rushed and hurried- she was so nervous not to reveal anything that she'd let her acting slip for a moment- and she knew a moment was enough for Kabuto to notice._ Great job, Akane. Really convenient._

Her head was pounding. She didn't have time to come back to her senses after the shock. This was all happening too fast. She'd spent two long, _long_ years living a tough but peaceful village life... and then this happened! Time was what she needed, to conciliate her thoughts and impressions…

"So, what'ya think?" Hana chirped the moment her foot stepped onto the kitchen panel, "Isn't he just swee-"

"Y'know what, he's too old for you," Akane cut in coolly.

"...what?"

"If I remember correctly, he's older than twenty years old," Akane said in a final tone as she compulsively cleaned the serving plate with a cloth. She decided to keep the girl away from Kabuto even more stubbornly now. Something seemed very wrong…

"He's twenty-two! That's not so old!"

"And you are only fifteen!" Akane countered, "That's whole seven years of difference."

"I'm not a child, Akane!" Hana pouted, "I can take care of myself."

Akane, completely motherly-like, snorted.

"I can!" Hana's usually pretty face turned into a grimace, "I know what I'm doing. I have had more relationships in two years than you in your lifetime!"

Akane tried to convince herself that Hana's comment, in all its honesty, didn't hurt.

"That doesn't make you a grown-up Hana," she calmly said, but the fifteen-year-old whipped past her, furious. It occurred to Akane that she couldn't remember if she and Hana had ever fought the way they did just a moment ago. She stared at the wall for a few moments, thinking.

"He left…" she heard Hana's voice from around the corner, cracked with disappointment. Akane followed her to the dinning-part. Abandoned chairs and bare plates were all she found- there was no trace of Sound ninjas.

"Good riddance too," Ken barked from behind the bar, "I swear I'll put the 'no ninja' sign on this place as soon as I stop needing their bloody money."

Hana shrieked dramatically, "Ken, you old geezer, Kabuto-kun* is a real gentleman!"

_Kabuto- __**kun**__? _the thought bolted feverishly through Akane's mind,_ Since when does Hana use honorifics with anybody?_

"The four-eyed kid? Gah, I like that one the least. Though he seems to get a lot a respect from his littl' group… like he's their superior or somethin'," Ken shook his head, "Got bad vibes from that kid, seriously."

_You've got one hell of an intuition, Ken-san,_ Akane thought as she watched Hana puff indignantly and leave up the stairs. Alone in the room now, Akane came up to the table and started picking up the used plates.

She... wasn't feeling well. Nauseous would be the best word to describe it. This brief meeting with an actual character from Naruto show shook her to the core. It left her disturbed and feeling unsafe.

Mostly because... Kabuto had seemed weird, Akane concluded. Meeting him in person made her wonder. Didn't he act a little- in lack of a better phrase- out of character? In the series she remembered he was loyal, secretive and calm, but still kind of haughty. _This_ Kabuto she met was polite, well-mannered and pretty darn cheery, if you asked her. Gentleman-like, almost. _Sweet, _she frowned at the word Hana had used. It disturbed her the most that Kabuto's presence put her _at ease_ and not _on the edge_ like she had expected. Like it was supposed to. Heck, _he_ wasn't what she had expected at all! She almost felt pleasant enough with him to stay and chat, talk to him about everything and nothing, tell him about—

_...my God._

Isn't that what he had wanted? What he had asked her to do? To talk about Hana and herself? Akane's heart stopped beating for a moment. Thinking about it more clearly now, it was even more suspicious than she had thought in that moment, when she had only instinctively backed away. Good thing she was _expressively_ distrustful by nature... or else...

_Or else what?_

The guy had just met her. Apparently, he was on good terms with Hana, who he had even called –chan, but why would he ask about _her_? Although he was obviously trying to stay discrete, being so nice and all, in the last moment he went too far and her natural instincts had kicked in. Yes, it looked more like information gathering than friendly talk or even- God forbid- flirting to her. She would know. Maybe she wasn't experienced in all this ninja-stuff, but she liked to think that she was somewhat analytical, at least.

Not to forget that she knew who he was. **What** he was.

Now, as much as it pained her to admit, Akane could see clearly why Hana liked him so much. Yakushi Kabuto was a real smooth talker. He almost lulled her as well with his beautiful mannerism. She tried to recall the memory of Kabuto from the Chuunin Exam episodes. The one who helped team seven. Friendly. Helpful. Yes, Kabuto was perfectly capable of acting the good guy.

But what did he want with the two of them anyway? He'd just met them and yet...

This was going to be a problem, she knew it. Hana was completely swooned by the 'nice Kabuto', and yet it would be too risky to give her all the dirty details about this man. Akane tried to remember anything else from their two-minute-long conversation, but couldn't remember anything that would matter.

Then why did she suddenly feel so threatened? Why did she feel the need to hide Hana under her skirt from him?

_Don't think about him anymore, _she told herself, _He left, alright? He will never come back. He has no reason to._

So the days went by and life went its usual.

Working. Cleaning. Acid on her arms. Dirt on her cheeks. Wearing itchy brown clothes. All those small, irritating and inevitable adjustments she had to make.

Arguing. Worrying about Hana. Arguing again **with** Hana.

_Kabuto-kun this. Kabuto-kun that_. Hana was truly a love-sick puppy. _He's so cool. He's so nice. So smart. _

_How would you know that? Wearing glasses doesn't make you smart, Hana,_ Akane would protest tiredly during the girl's passionate speeches. Hana would pout and the room would be silent for a moment. _You're right though,_ Akane would add a second later, a strange expression painted over her serious face, _Yakushi Kabuto is very, very smart._

He was too _disgustingly_ smart. He always kept pleasantly smiling. Murderers **shouldn't** smile, dammit!

Mostly, the increasingly paranoid eighteen-year-old spent long hours busting her head over her meeting with Kabuto and rewinding their conversation, looking for any sign of malevolence. It should have been of comfort to her that there wasn't any.

This fact, however, only served to feed her paranoia even more.

* * *

It was one late evening, three weeks later, when Kabuto returned to Futari's bar. About 8 o'clock. The diner was almost empty.

It would be his third time visiting in three months' time. Akane found this suspicious out of the simple reason that no ninja _ever_ came to Futari even twice. There was no need to, seeing as the village was in the middle of nowhere and Sound, Cloud and Leaf villages weren't exactly buddies. They would come and go, each on his own way, and that would be that.

"Oh, just passing here from the mission, as always," Kabuto said with his regular polite smile.

"Mmmm, I bet Kabuto-kun gets all the best missions there!" Hana nodded her head, childishly eager to get his attention.

All the while they chatted away, doubt was eating Akane from the inside. _Why? Why did you _**_reall_**_**y** come back?_

It was clear that Hana was out of her mind from happiness. She bounced through the diner in her most beautiful yukata, soft make-up adding to her overall beauty, and 'accidentally' touched Kabuto's arm on whatever chance she got. Unfortunately for her and much to Akane's relief, the medic seemed to ignore it.

"What would you and your friends like to order tonight, Kabuto-_kun?_" she purred and batted her long eyelashes in an attempt of flirting.

"Please, just a bottle of sake, Hana-chan," he ordered smoothly, elegantly inclining his silver head towards her. Akane heard how he put the emphasis with his tongue on the –chan honorific. _What are you trying to accomplish?_ she wrinkled her nose.

"Coming right up, Kabuto-kun," Hana smiled lovably at him, before she dragged herself to the kitchen in form of a giggling puddle of squealing hormones. Ah, she was on cloud nine!

_You stubborn, naïve girl._

A pair of greenish eyes was watching her, hidden from the top of the stairs that led to the rooms. Akane watched over her warily.

_Stupid, obsessive girl._

If you asked the serious eighteen-year-old, Hana acted pathetically when the ninja was around. Akane heard her rushing back to the table, humming 'Love song' and she felt she had had enough. She turned around, leaving for their room because, frankly, she was tempted to go downstairs and bitchslap them both across the face until they couldn't feel their bloody cheeks anymore! Yes, it was nice thinking about that... Nothing she could and would do about it though. If Hana liked him that much, then she'd better-

Akane was about to enter her room, when her ears picked up strange shuffling noises coming from the first floor. _What the…?_

Something was happening downstairs...

CRACK!

There was a sound of breaking glass. Chair scraping the floor, wood screeching on wood.

And in the next moment, there was a terrible scream.

_Hana._

Immediately, Akane whirled in her place, almost spraining her neck in the speed.

_Panic._

Afraid. Air stuck in her lungs, she couldn't breathe. In just one moment, she was so _stupidly_ afraid!

_Something happened to Hana, _her whole being screamed at her, _He did something to Hana! Protect her! Don't let him—_

Akane bolted down the hallway.

_Hurry-_

Down the stairs.

_Quickly-_

Into the dinning room, tripping and catching herself on the door-frame. She breathed heavily. Panic. _I need to protect her._ _Whatever happened… **He** did it… He did it, I'm sure of it!_

Steadying herself up, Akane lifted her eyes in front of her. Her lips parted in horror. Her fists clenched reflexively at her sides. The scene made blood leave her face.

A shattered bottle of sake covered the floor while liquid dripped down its broken glass pieces. The odour was strong in the air, instantly making her head heavy and dizzy. Strangely, the ninjas sat in their seats, indifferent, except…

One chair was empty and thrown to the floor in a dispatched wooden heap.

And there, amongst the shiny, sharp pieces of glass stood Hana.

Her eyes were wide with fright and her lips half-opened in a scream. In front of her, standing coolly, with the barest frown on his face, was none other than Yakushi Kabuto...

... clenching her small hand that was dripping with blood.

* * *

**Translation: ****Aliud est celare, aliud tacere- To conceal is one thing, to be silent another.**

**Japanese honorifics (not gonna put this in my other chapters, so memorize them now, please):**

***-san: denotes that the person being spoken to is of equal or nearly equal social status. It is used for people you don't know well. It's formal and polite, but keeps the speaker in distance with the one he speaks with.**

****-chan: is a diminutive suffix; it expresses that the speaker finds a person endearing**.** In general, **_**chan**_** is used for babies, young children, and teenage girls. It may also be used towards cute animals, lovers, close friends, or any youth like woman.**

*****kun:** **Used for male friends and relatives**. **It can also be used by females when addressing a male that they are emotionally attached to or have known for long.**

* * *

**A/N: I wonder if this is what they call a cliffhanger…** **Am I being evil? xD**

She tried to convince herself that Hana's comment, in all its honesty, didn't hurt.


	10. Tempus omnia revelat

**Chapter ten:**

**Tempus omnia revelat**

**A/N: Sorry for not updating last Friday, but there is a reason for that. You see, I found a beta and she needed some time to edit this chapter, hence we were late with the update. Let's all give a hand to ****Miranda Panda-chan****!  
**

**On with the story now... **

* * *

Running. Akane found herself running fiercely towards them at the sight of blood covering Hana's hand.

_He hurt her, _the voice hissed wickedly in her ear, _**You**__ let him hurt her. After all the warnings, after everything you__** knew**__, you __**let**__ him…_

Blood dripping down the girl's forearm—

A sticky puddle beneath her feet-

Kabuto's apathetic composure-

_Nonononononononononono-_

Suddenly Akane saw red. Anger flared in her chest. Fists clenched. Teeth bared.

She opened her mouth and the words that left them were laced with so much desperation, so much worry, so much fright, she couldn't _bear_ to silence herself any longer.

"**Get the hell away from her!"**

It all crashed down on her and Akane realized that she was screaming at the silver-haired man. She screamed and lunged at him.

His black eyes widening in surprise- flash- Hana's eyes- flash- Voices yelling at her- flashflashflash- Colours spinning-

Akane felt herself make contact with a bigger body, pushing him away, _away from Hana. _He stumbled clumsily from the intent push and, loosing his balance, fell backwards.

Three wooden chairs screeched harshly against the wood of the floor.

She couldn't see them, but Akane knew that Sound ninjas have jumped to their feet as well. This information didn't matter enough to her at all in the moment, her focus narrowed to nobody but Kabuto. Her mind was wrapped in the strong smell of alcohol that lingered heavily in the air, inflaming her nostrils, _infuriating her._

A touch.

Red.

A gentle hand was smudged with red. Akane saw it locking around her waist with the other uninjured one, securely holding her against a much smaller body.

_Oh God, I let him hurt her._

The strange monotonous humming of her rushing blood in her ears was intersected with a loud voice breathing in her ear. Shouting. Calling.

Screaming at her.

"Stop it, Akane!** STOP IT!** What the fuck are you doing? Stop it NOW!"

. . .

It took an instant, and the red haze cleared, fading from the corners of her vision, sharpening the edges.

Hana was standing behind her, holding her back, as if she was afraid that Akane might jump at the man on the floor again. _Good assumption_. Her ears tingled. Hana was the one who yelled at her, she realized.

Ninjas stood threateningly at the side, but they were stopped in bringing out their weapons by a quick motion of Kabuto's hand. The medic stood up slowly, almost hesitantly to his feet. He turned to them and the expression on his face shocked Akane even further.

Confusion. Pure _innocent_ confusion.

_How fucking dare he! _Akane shifted in Hana's lock, but the smaller girl strengthened her grip.

"Are you going to attack him with no reason again?" Hana whispered the question into her ear, tone unusually chilling and furious.

A bewildered silence ensued._**  
**_

_No reason? _Akane thought, _**No reason?!**_

"That's alright, Hana-chan," Kabuto's light voice rang, smashing the enchanted tepidity. He shifted in his spot, as if embarrassed with the situation, "We will be going now."

Quickly turning on his heel, he went for the door. The ninjas followed obediently behind, cursing under their breaths. Akane faintly detected the words 'mad', 'crazy' and 'unbelievable'.

_He's getting away!_ she looked desperately at Ken behind his bar table. The man was giving her the wildest look she'd ever seen him make. _What in the-  
_

"N-No… K-Kabuto-kun, wait!" Hana stammered out, not releasing her grip on the senior girl. The Sound ninjas hurriedly left through the doorframe into the streets, never once turning.

"Thank you!" hana shouted after the door was closed with a loud 'twack' and Akane looked at her like she'd grown another head.

_Thank you? What the f-_

"What's wrong with you?" Hana got into her face, "What the hell did you do that for?"

_**What? **_Akane stared at her, failing to comprehend, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. All the rage melted down in an instant as sheer incredulity took its place.

"What's wrong with **me**? H-He attacked you…" her voice trailed off, growing limp and meek at Hana's flabbergasted expression.

Another silence took place, even more awkward than the last.

"What are you talking about, Akane-chan? Nobody attacked anybody!" Ken looked at her, concern written in his features. The entire bar was eyeing her curiously, shaking their heads in disapproval. Apparently embarrassed by witnessing what they did, the few guests all stood up and one-by-one left the bar, leaving money on tables and their drinks unfinished. As the last customer left, the door was roughly smashed shut.

"Attacked me? You mean Kabuto-kun?" Hana questioned, obviously baffled, "Why would he do something like that? I know you don't like him Akane, but to just tackle him like that… Jesus!"

Suddenly, Akane felt so out of the whole story. Stupid, too.

"B-but your hand!" she muttered and was appalled at her week voice, "All the blood-!"

"I cut myself on the bottle," Hana released her waist and took a step back, "Kabuto-kun accidentally dropped it when I was passing it to him." She looked at Akane like she was something weird and possibly still hazardous. "I tried to catch it but it smashed into the ground right beneath my fingers." A bloodied arm was held up for Akane to see.

The eighteen-year-old expected to see ugly ripped flesh glaring back at her, yet... There was none. Hana's palm was semi-clean, only stained with few blood marks, like it had already been cleaned…

"Wha? ... but the injury-!"

"He was **healin****g** it, Akane," Hana said, "Kabuto jumped up instantly and took my hand." She blushed slightly before continuing, "He explained he was a doctor and then his hand started to glow a pretty green light. Healing chakra thingy, he told me. It worked. The wound started to heal that very moment. It was... It was _amazing!_ He was wiping the blood the moment you… " her words faded and she looked at the other girl as if looking for an explanation.

Akane gaped. Green light. Healing jutsu. _Was… was… he really…?_ She shot a look at Ken to confirm the story. The old man looked at her weirdly before giving a quick nod.

"You acted like a complete maniac you know, just bursting into the room like that," Hana looked at her, eyes narrowed as she scolded her like a small child, "Screamed at him like you were absolutely insane! Oh, what is Kabuto-kun going to think of me now?"

Akane placed her head into her arms.

Idiot. Moron. Imbecile.

Stupid. _Stupid_. _**Stupid**_!

She was so ashamed she couldn't think straight. She'd just caused a scene, a scandal, in the middle of the bar! Made a fool out of herself! She literally attacked somebody out of the thin air! She **let** her fear and worries out of hand!

She attacked Kabuto while he was **helping** her friend.

_Kabuto is innocent, Kabuto is innocent, Kabuto is innocent…_ it echoed in her mind. _**You** are the bad guy and that damned **Yakushi Kabuto** is innocent._

Beside her, lost in her own thoughts, Hana was sulking. She turned and eyeballed the older girl. _Poisonously._

"Great job, Akane. Wonderful. Now he thinks the worst of me and will never come back again! Are you happy now?" Such venom. Anger. Akane felt herself shrinking at each word.

"I-I'm sorry," she tried to say with as much dignity as she could muster up. She didn't want to stammer, "I'm really sorry. I don't know what got into me." _Doubts. Worries. Impulse to protect._ "I thought he was-"

"What, Akane, what? That he was, huh, _attacking_ me, out of all the people, in front of Ken and all of our remaining guests? God, you acted like you've completely lost your mind!"

... all the older girl could do was to kept quiet.

"Hana-chan… Why don't you go upstairs and… finish cleaning your hand?" Ken suggested peacefully, looking between the two girls, "Akane-chan and I are going to clean this mess up."

With another enraged glare sent her way, Hana took Ken's advice and left the two of them in the dining part. The sound of water rushing from upstairs was heard a minute later.

Alone with him Akane almost prayed Ken-san would yell at her.

But he didn't.

Al he did was exhale a long, tired sigh. "Clean this up," he put a broom into her hand, his tone disappointed and suddenly so old. It made her feel terrible. He took the mop, and without another word, they started to clean.

* * *

The shame she felt didn't go away the next day. If anything, it only worsened.

Akane couldn't believe how temperamental she had acted. How impulsive. Reckless. _Stupid._

It was always a mistake when people assumed she was a calm person. Outwardly, maybe. When things went her way, absolutely. When she analyzed them and predicted the outcome of the situation, so she could prepare for it. It was essential to_ be prepared._ Improvisations were never her thing, seeing how she never gave herself the permission to be spontaneous. Her reason was often the only thing she listened to, but it had a tendency to become her shackles.

Things always got worse for her when she was rid of her ability to predict. _'Shock'_ was her most loathed emotion. Without any false modesty, Akane prided herself on her witty, analytical mind. She knew to quickly inspect any new surrounding and situation, always keen on forming a plan. But. When something happened so out of the thin air, so randomly, like Kabuto's visit, or the whole process with appearing in the other world, her mind blocked.

That was the fact Akane was most ashamed of.

She couldn't remember the last time she had made a scene. Maybe it never happened before? All she knew was that, when she saw Hana in the hands of a man she _knew_ was bad news, she got a strong urge to protect her. She promised to herself, that night, under the starry sky, that she would never let any harm come to Hana. And Akane prided herself on the fact that she had always kept her promises.

This time, she screwed up. It would seem she was even more worried than she allowed herself to think. She was definitely _not_ afraid of Kabuto, she thought furiously. No, she proved that much to herself when she jumped in between him and Hana. But if anything happened to her friend…

Akane confessed this to Hana the day after the incident. The girl watched her suspiciously for a few moments before she sighed and muttered something amongst the lines, "Man, will you just stop acting like you're my mother already?" Akane smiled, but made no promises. The fifteen-year old scowled at her some more, describing Kabuto's warm hands and the admiration she felt for him as a 'fellow-doctor', but in the end she got over it. She didn't promise to never mention it again, much to Akane's dismay, and she continued to peck her with it from time to time.

Upon closer inspection, the girls discovered that Hana's right hand wasn't completely healed. There was a faint scar on the lateral side of her index finger from its base, about two centimeters long. It was a nasty cut, but quite unnoticeable, seeing that it was on a concealed spot.

"Great, I'm scarred for life, like, literally. Kabuto-kun could have healed that too, you know," Hana would mention nonchalantly during some conversation, making Akane shrink in guilt, "If only **someone** hadn't stopped him so rudely before he finished-"

"Ok, ok, I get it!" the older girl would defend herself. She never let it show on her face how much the memory actually bothered her.

For the next few days, Hana was like a broken record. The name 'Kabuto-kun' was repeated so many times in a minute that Akane thought she would go mad!

_Kabuto-kun was such a gentleman! Kabuto-kun was __the__ perfect guy. Kabuto-kun knew how to heal with __only__ his __**hands**__! I mean, wow, right? Kabuto-kun and she would have made a wonderful medic-couple together! Kabuto-kun was so madly in love with her that he was probably going to ask her to marry him __except that__** someone **__had__ ruined all of her chances. Kabuto-kun-_

So. so. naive.

Still, Akane never mentioned her displeasure to Hana. The girl had all the right in the world to nag at her. She also never told her that a big part of her was really indescribably glad that Kabuto wouldn't be coming back to Futari ever again.

Or so she thought.

* * *

A week had passed since the incident.

One week.

**Seven**. freaking. days.

And then he was back.

Akane watched him from the kitchen as he took his usual seat with his ninja pack. It felt like seeing a ghost. She called herself paranoid, but this was the most suspicious act he'd done yet. Why?

Because it would be his fourth time visiting Futari.

_Too fast_. He came back faster than any of the previous times. Akane did a quick calculation in her head. Between the first and the second time there was a little over a month, maybe even two. Then it was three weeks. And now, only seven days. Unless his missions usually took him through the Land of Fire _that_ many times in a row, Akane couldn't help but feel suspicious. _Why in the world did he come back?_

The most disturbing fact, however, was that the diner was almost closed when he came. It was late, about eleven in the evening, so the whole place was empty except for Ken, Hana and herself. Kabuto had never come so late before. _Something is wrong_, she thought, not for the first time, and scratched her arm where her hair bristled.

Yet, she kept her thoughts to herself as she watched Hana. The fifteen-year-old was so excited that Akane thought the girl would pee herself from happiness.

"He came back! I can't believe it, after all the crap he got from you, he came back!" the fifteen-year-old ranted, quickly combing her beautiful black hair and applying make-up. In that very moment, Akane knew. All of her warnings were long forgotten and buried. Was it too late? Did her little 'show' destroy all the faith Hana had in her?

Akane followed her little friend with thoughtful eyes as she left the kitchen and went up to the table. Kabuto was smiling, per usual. The two talked for quite some time. She could hear Hana giggling and blabbering passionately, and she knew that there was no use. She was already too much under his spell.

The dark-haired girl came back to the kitchen some time later, cheeks flushed and eyes glittering. Without any explanations, she turned to Akane and gave her a stern look. "You should apologize."

A moment's pause. "…excuse me?"

"I said, you should apologize," Hana repeated, unamused, "Kabuto-kun's been so nice to us. He even came back after you treated him so roughly. Wouldn't it be _impolite _not to say you're sorry?"

Ouch. That hit a nerve. Akane looked at her, mute.

She _was_ sorry. She really was, but only because that guy was clean and she'd been wrong.

"…fine," she gave in, grudgingly. Hana was right in the end. It _would_ be impolite. And Akane's deeply integratted manners would never stop guilting her in if she didn't do so.

Satisfied, Hana smiled in an encouraging manner, "Great." She passed a serving plate to her and shooed her out of the kitchen. "This is their order. And Akane," she called, "**try** not to scare him away."

The older girl barely stopped the snort that was making its way from the depths of her throat._ Not good. This is **so** not gonna end good._

Akane made her way to the only occupied table in the diner, steps slow and hesitant. _Relax_, the girl encouraged herself, _it's not like you've never apologized in your life. _But she rarely had. And she **really** didn't want to apologize to yakushi Kabuto. Another step. And another. And-

"Your drinks," she announced.

The gray-clad ninjas regarded her coolly. Akane could feel their glares freezing her skin through layers of her simple brown apron. She had not gotten on their good side, she could tell. Even Kabuto seemed to ignore her presence altogether. She turned, eager to get away from the unpleasant atmosphere, but stopped mid-step.

_Hold it right there. This is it. I have to do this,_ she cursed her situation and her good manners, _And it's gonna **sting**… _She imagined the enormous lump in her throat to be her pride, then she swallowed it hard, forcing it down. Dimly, she took a deep breath and turned to the silver-haired medic.

"Kabuto-san? I just wanted to say I'm-"

"Did Hana-chan go pack her belongings, Akane-san?" the medic interjected suddenly. His tone was flat and inquiring, words spoken in the most formal manner.

Akane blinked. _What?_

"I beg your pardon?" she asked hurriedly, dread filling her stomach and rising into her throat.

"The little Miss expressed her wish to come with me," Kabuto continued, not looking at her but inspecting his drink instead, "Oh. Please excuse my boldness if I misunderstood, I thought she told you."

He took a small, experimental sip of it as Akane watched him, bewildered. Utterly speechless.

_He… He is taking Hana away? He can't be- _Slowly, the medic put his glass down and turned to face her, smiling as if he was embarrassed for her sake. However, she knew that underneath the faux sincerity the man before her was reeking of smugness, taking her baffled expression as an indicator to her ignorance.

"How unfortunate. But, being a gentleman I am, I accepted her offer," he carried on when Akane made no indication of speech, his voice amiably apologetic. If Akane hadn't known any better, she would've never heard a thread of mock that had been masterfully interlaced in his words.

But she did, and words ripped from her throat before she could stop herself.

"A gentleman, you say?" she whispered, venom finally spilling in her mouth, burning her lips with hot anger. Her face was a mask as she gave him her sweetest smile. It did nothing to warm up her chillingly polite tone. "Amenity is ostensible, Kabuto-san."

He returned her a smile of frost, calculating black eyes matching her own.

"**You** would know that, wouldn't you, Akane-san?"

. . .

The air of tepidity hung above them, threatening, dripping like icicles. The implication of his words was double-edged and not lost to Akane: **_Your politeness is nothing but a convenient lie, because you know who I am and would like nothing more than to see me gone._**

A hodge-podge of thoughts flashed in her mind. Wha—_ H-He knows! No, that's impossible, how can he? Did Hana…? No, she couldn't! S-she wouldn't! She would never—Would she? _Akane stared at him, mind racing, teeth grinding in suspense. Kabuto made no move, simply sitting and inspecting her reaction hawkishly. _No, there is just no way-_

"Don't worry Akane-san," he smirked at her, keeping his polite façade, words carefully chosen and taunting, "I will take good care of the little Miss. We shall-"

_Never._

"You will do nothing!" Akane raised her tone, infuriated, oblivious to the fact that she was being provoked, "Why don't you just leave?"

_He is taking her away! Do something! Don't let him hurt her! _Her protective instincts howled in unison, concern plaguing her mind and erasing her reason with the rest. And in the next moment, Akane found herself hissing at him, "Why don't you just go away to your **godforsaken Sound** and never come back! **Just. g****o. away!**"

The animosity in the air was almost palpable. It was pulsating, squeezing, _drowning_ her.

He watched her, taken aback for just a moment, before quickly regaining his calculating demeanor. Absolute, abnormal quiet followed her outburst and she turned around herself, confused. Two of the Sound ninja were observing her, their facial expressions hidden and unnerving, as if waiting for something to happen. _Wait, two? Weren't there—_

Kabuto's sudden movement shifted all of her attention solely to back to him. He leaned his upper part to the side and fumbled with something around his right leg under the table. Nobody said a word as he straightened up and almost deliberately slowly put the object on the table.

A soft 'clang' was produced by it and Akane realized she was looking at Kabuto's headband. Polished metal surface reflected the illumination of the bar and Akane inspected the carved symbol.

Then she gasped.

_It wasn't the expected note sign._

Her pupils dilated, pulse quickening.

A familiar spiral rounding to its center greeted her look and twisted her gut.

**The symbol of Konoha.**

_Oh God._

"I do not recall," Kabuto spoke, each word sickeningly gentle, "giving my **true** village's name to the little Miss or yourself."

His eyes, now missing none of their cruelty, bore into her terrified greenish ones.

. . .

Breath halted in her throat.

_He was wearing his old __**Konoha**__ headband this entire time… and she had just said…?_

Mouth dry. Palms wet.

_Panic._

"A-Akane? What's going on?"

_No!_

She turned around herself in time to see Hana standing at the door frame, face twisted with confusion.

_Get away from here!_ She wanted to scream and yet no words came out. _Run! Don't just stand there!_

Akane watched Hana's eyes widen at something she saw behind her, at the same time she saw the third nameless ninja appear behind the young girl's back.

"K-Kabuto-kun—Wha-What are you doing?"

"Hana, behind you!"

The last thing Akane saw was the ninja bringing a quick punch to the side of Hana's neck (_eyes wide in terror, mouth opening in a scream_) before she felt a sharp pain in hers as well. Somebody's breath on her skin, then heaviness in her limbs.

The world went mute.

The last thing she heard was Ken's intense shouting and then-

Blackness.

… he was silenced as well.

* * *

**Translation: Tempus omnia revelat- Time reveals all things.**

**A/N: This was a pretty long chapter, if you ask me… Leave a comment and review. xD**


	11. Nihil lacrima citius arescit

**Chapter eleven:**

**Nihil lacrima citius arescit**

**A/N: Let the 'Sound arc' begin! What adventures and horrors (yes, horrors) lie ahead?**

* * *

Freezing.

Anguish.

Trembling all over.

White, excruciating pain smashed her head open, pounding at the inner walls of her skull. If she moved it to the side just the tiniest bit, her neck burned with the uncomfortable stretching of the skin and bones crunching in her ears.

Akane lay very still, afraid to move an inch and come to the risk of having her head roll off of her shoulders.

The ground beneath her was cool and felt beautiful against her sore skin. Dragging her fingertips across its surface, the girl suddenly froze.

She lightly scratched it.

_Stone?_

The eighteen-year-old felt dizzy and languid and she vaguely wondered _why is that?_ when she was obviously in a lying position. _Wasn't I sleeping?_ Her musings were cut short by a coughing fit raking from her lungs, induced by shock when her nose acknowledged its function again and operated the smells to the center in her brain.

The air was cold and sour and altogether awfully nauseating. It reminded her of mold, which made her think of hovels, basements, and old, dirty, forgotten places. She couldn't quite place it yet, but the nagging feeling just above the reach of her conscious made her wary. Simultaneously, her ears had begun registering the noise- or rather, the lack of it. It was too quiet and too still and-

-_my God there is something** breathing near me!**_

"A-Akane?" a voice called then, low and shushed, just somewhere above her head.

... she continued to lay motionlessly, not breathing, but listening to the other one's inhalations.

Fear.

She could feel her heartbeats bumping in every fiber of her being.

"Akane, i-is t-that you?" the voice called again; there was a distinct tremble in it as it rose in pitch, "Akane, please... are… are you a-awake?"

_Hana._

Instantly, Akane opened her eyes, relief washing over her, and yet her vision remained nothing but a veil of darkness. _Is it night? _She closed and opened them again. Black. It was all the same. It was so dark that there was no difference whether her eyes were opened or closed. The girl blinked another few times, slowly, checking her sight, as to confirm to herself that she was, indeed, awake.

"Yes."

There was a gasping sigh from behind her, to her right.

"Thank God," Hana spoke from somewhere within the pressing darkness. A sound of shuffling clothes and a soft pat of footsteps followed soon after, serving as an indicator to Akane that the other girl was approaching her. Hana now stood directly above her lying form and she could faintly, _very_ faintly, make out the silhouette of the girl's head. She detected Hana's lips moving and concentrated on the mental reconstruction of her other features.

"I-I've been standing in the same spot for ages," the girl stuttered, her voice strained as if she'd been crying or just about to, "I called f-f-for you when I woke up... but you d-didn't answer… and I thought..."

There was a moment of pause in which Akane imagined the younger girl habitually biting her lip.

"It's s-so dark. I thought I was alone. God, I-I was so s-scared that-"

"I can't see you properly, where are you?" Akane immediately interrupted, just so she could stop the torrent of girl's anxious words, "Give me a hand, I can't move." She cringed as she spoke- obviously she had underestimated her condition. Her headache spiked up from a dull pound to a sharp thorny pain.

"R-Right." Warm fingers curled around her shoulder, slowly tilting her body up, while another hand settled at the base of her head. Akane jerked back in pain.

"It's pretty bad, I know how you feel," Hana half-whispered sympathetically, pulling her into a sit, "It probably took me about half an hour to get up and remember everything. When they—I mean, _he_-" the younger girl struggled with words, refusing to finish the sentence. "We were drugged," she stated finally.

"Drugged? What are you...?" the long-haired girl questioned, still dizzy and nauseous. It was only then the scene unfolded before her eyes.

_Bar—headband—ninja—Kabuto—_

_Punch to the neck—Pain—Blackness—_

"They… They hit our pressure points," she remembered out loud, more of a fact than a question.

"And rendered us unconscious, yeah, something like that," Hana finally managed to push her into a proper sitting position, placing her hands to her back for support, "But it doesn't really work like that, y'know. You practiced martial arts, so you know what I mean..."

Akane shook her head, but remembering that Hana couldn't see her all that well, decided to speak, "No, not really. We never learning anything about it, being too dangerous to be taught in a regular dojo. One hit a centimeter off could be fatal…" Jesus, why did her throat feel so damn sore?

"Oh. Yeah. That's true," she could feel Hana rubbing her shoulders in circles now, the sensation bringing tangs of pain, followed by instant relaxation of her muscles, "Well, on each side and at the base and center of the neck is a nerve center. If struck properly and with enough force- hold still now- it causes loss of consciousness for twenty to thirty seconds without injuring the person. Thirty seconds, get it? Not like in the movies. We must have been sedated in order to move us to this place… wherever we are…"

Akane listened to the other girl in mild fascination. So, Hana _did_ actually know what she was talking about when on the topic of medicine- the dumb fifteen-year-old grew in her eyes by a whole two impressive notches.

While the pain was gradually subsiding, her limbs were still stiff and lifeless. Akane hesitantly touched her neck and flinched from the freezing cold of her fingers. She found the feeling of her pulse pumping so heartily to be a strangely comforting rhythm.

"So, a drug?" she echoed, flinching at the idea, "At least that _would_ explain this… bloody fatigue…"

She closed her eyes again, feeling too tired _(**scared,** though she would never admit it_) to stare at the dark before her. A string of thoughts, each more terrifying than the last, knotted together in her mind, hard to assemble with blades of upcoming panic slowly cutting through them.

We were knocked out.

Paraphrase the thought.

Kidnapped.

By them.

By Kabuto and his thugs.

Ninja.

Who work under an S-classed criminal, Orochimaru.

Suddenly, for the first time in many months, as if she had just woken up from a coma and looked, really _looked_ at the world around her, Akane realized that they were in a different universe. Not just any different world at that, but a world she knew, with people she knew, people she never thought she would meet or see, least of all be imprisoned by. It was stupid. It was ludicrous. It was so wrong.

Most of all, it suddenly seemed far too terrifying.

Shaking the incredulity out of her head, the eighteen-year-old proceeded to organize all the information she had collected so far.

_It's dark. The floor is made out of stone. And this smell… like something rotting…_

She tried to recall the time when she felt the disgusting odor, although she knew it must have been very fainter then. That's when it came to her.

_The reek of death. Doubled by the smell of rot. Bodies. This smell is of corpses and wet walls. _

Nausea filled her from her stomach to her throat again at the thought that there were possibly butchered corpses somewhere around her, maybe just a hand-reach away, covered in slimy fungus, parasites and hungry rats. Staring with their empty eye sockets into the same darkness that imprisoned her.

_No light. __Lots of dirt and earth as well. __We must be underground. In a cell. Possibly alone. It's far too quiet._

Collecting all of the newly acquired information, the most plausible conclusion she could make was that they were in one of Orochimaru's various underground lairs. It left little for imagining. They were held captive in a Sound base.

Meaning, they were as good as _dead._

"So why don't you just say it?"

Jerked out of her thoughts by Hana's voice startlingly close to her ear, she turned slightly to her companion. Lost in her mind, Akane hadn't taken notice when Hana sat beside her.

"Say what?"

"Oh don't play dumb with me. I know you're just dying to say it, so do it already," was the loud, somewhat irritated reply.

Akane blinked, baffled by the change in the girl's tone and tried her best to accustom her eyesight to the dark background of the dungeon. "Hana, what are you—"

"**I told you so**," Hana intersected, "Why don't you just say it already?"

There was it again. Such anger.

"What are you talking about? I wasn't going to sa—"

"Like hell you weren't," the younger girl said. "Go on, say it. Say 'I told you so'. Say how you were right about Kabuto. Say that I'm s-s-stupid! Say that I-I'm just a-a ki-kid. T-That I'm just… I'm just…" her words drowned in a river of sobs and strange raspy noises. Akane was so flabbergasted that she needed a few moments to figure out what was going on.

Hana was crying.

_Please don't… Don't, I can't...  
_

The younger girl pressed to Akane's side, leaning close in, seeking touch and warmth. Acceptance. Guidance. Comfort and security. Seeking something that Akane wasn't sure she was able to provide.

Seeking _a lie._

"It's just... s-so cold…" Hana whispered, clutching the rough fabric of the other girl's apron, burying her face into her shoulder. Soon enough, Akane's shirt was moistened with hot drops, small hands curled at her waist, her ears filled with shaky exhalations and salty weeps. She was suddenly glad it was dark.

She couldn't have been able to look at Hana's face if it had not been.

She vividly remembered that night, more than two years ago: her promise, Hana's first tears. They were both older now, and yet, despite growing in height and matching Akane, Hana was curled up like a wounded child at her side. And Akane was eighteen, not the know-it-all sixteen-year-old she had once been, and yet it was as if nothing had changed- she was still so unsure of what to do, without a plan, without a slightest idea of what would happen to them next. But she wasn't scared.

At least, that's what she told herself over and over again.

She was getting rather good at lying.

"Hey... listen... it's gonna be alright," Akane licked her lips and patted the other girl gently, circling her with her other hand in a tentative hug. "Hush… hush… it's…"

_Darkness. Stone under her fingers. Cold biting her skin. Silence. Nothing, nothing, nothing._

"…it's going to be alright."

_Cries. Dead eyes watching her. Rot. Slime._

Yes, Akane nodded to herself, she was turning out to be a very good liar.

* * *

They slept and woke.

Minutes, hours later.

Seconds? Days?

Neither of them knew.

("_Good morning sunshines!" the darkness greeted them with a toothy wicked smile, "Welcome to the nightmare.")_

Akane shuddered at her own morbid imagination.

The stone was freezing cold except for the one spot they had warmed up with their bodies. The smell was still frowzy and decayed, their surroundings still a black pit. The whole feeling it gave off was one of a fridge filled with bloody meat and rotten fruits.

Nothing moved in the darkness, which made them conclude, with not a small dose of relief, that they were thankfully alone.

This time Akane stood up, stumbling to her feet. She couldn't allow herself sit in one spot. She had to find out more about their position.

"Stay right here," she instructed Hana as she sailed into the dark in front of her. _Like I need to tell her that. _The young girl was so spooked that she sat in one place, refusing to open her eyes. Trying to hide from the unfamiliar dark that pressed them from the sides- not the natural darkness of the night, with stars and the moon illuminating the sky, but a real look-proof, pitch-black, disorienting dark, fiendish and frightful like the one of caves and caverns.

Creeping through it, Akane counted her steps, extending her fingers one by one. Her other hand was raised in front of her, touching and grabbing the air for obstacles.

_One… Two… Three…_

**Tap. tap. tap.** her steps echoed off the unseen walls. For a moment Akane thought it was somebody walking behind her and laughed at herself for being a coward.

Then she looked behind her back.

Just in case.

_Monsters live in the dark_, old tales whispered in her ear, the ones buried since she was little. And Akane felt like a child, felt like running to her parents' bed, hiding from the night in the dark under her blanket. She pitied and envied Hana in that way of thinking, the girl was trying to hide from the dark equally childishly, by closing her eyes; yet even with her eyes closed, there was no security… it was all just as black. How ironic.

_So then what's the point? Why be afraid of it?_

Akane suppressed her fear with this new logic and willed herself to continue her search. It was like walking blind.

_Four… Five… Six… Seve—_

She hit a wall. Her hands quickly went over its surface, as if memorizing every bump and edge. _Stone again._ Cold and wet. She trailed her fingers across it and started walking sideways. She was planning to find a corner and the other of the four walls.

_One… Two… Three._

Only three steps this time. She continued her walk sideways, down the second wall, tracing her hands over the stone and concentrating on her numbers at the same time. The whole time she fought the fear of hitting against something (possibly dead) in the dark, a fear that gnawed at her heels to turn back.

_Again… one… two… three…_

Akane counted eight steps before she reached the corner that signalized the end of the second and the edge of the third wall. This time- something was different.

Under her palm, she felt metal.

Her fist clenched around the pole and pulled.

It didn't even budge.

_A prison bar, _she realized and put her thin arm through the gap between two bars, _This is the entry… and an exit. _Air fluttered in her chest.

Her eyes had gradually grown more accustomed to the lack of the light. She blinked into the blankness and sprung her neck. If she twisted it under the right angle, she could recognize the contour of big stairs curling around the corner on the other side of their cell.

_The way out._ Hope screamed in her mind.

She sidestepped again, following every single bar, stepping to the final corner.

_One… Two…_

…_and five_. Wall scratched her shoulder and she hissed at the contact.

_The cell is eight steps long and five steps wide._

_Hana and I were standing at seven steps from the back wall. That means she must be somewhere around… here._

She approached Hana from the back and the girl jumped at the hand being put on her shoulder.

"Woah! Shit, don't scare like that! How did you find me in this dark?"

"The cell is actually very small. It's completely empty and bare. We are the only ones here. You can move around freely."

Hana puffed. "Duh, like I care. I just want someone to come already, preferably Kabuto, so I could give him a piece of my mind!"

Then, as if on cue, they heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

**Tap... tap... tap…**

Suddenly alarmed, the girls waited in anxious silence, as the noise grew louder and the dark was being eaten away by the light of a single candle.

A Sound ninja.

Just a faceless, nameless shinobi, dressed in the regular grey outfit. He was carrying a tray in his hands.

"Where's Kabuto?" Hana addressed him as soon as the masked man neared the cell, "W-Where are we? What do you wan—"

The ninja kicked the bars with his foot, making Hana take several steps back.

"Shut up." The tray was pushed into the cell through a small opening near the ground. Then, just as quickly as he appeared, the Sound nin turned his back to them and started to leave.

"H-Hey! Hey, you! Come back!" Hana called, but the ninja had already left up the stairs and quickly out of their sight. Akane neared the tray suspiciously, circling around it. She silently thanked God when she saw that he left them a lit candle and a box of matches. Beside it, there were two bowls filled with disgusting mush: grey overcooked rice.

"Ewww, I ain't gonna eat this crap," Hana wrinkled her nose when she took one look at it.

Not even a few hours later, both bowls were empty.

* * *

They were starving.

They were cold.

They sat in silence, huddled against each other, and watched the wax drip down the candle. When they felt too tired, the girls slept back against back, and when they woke they often wondered what time it was.

The ninja came regularly, wielding the tray with food and a metal bucket.

"What do we need the bucket for?" Akane had asked him the first time, curious and tired of guessing. The ninja appeared to smirk at this, the fabric of his mask stretching into a grotesque.

"What do you think?" he mocked before leaving quickly, per usual.

Akane didn't get his implication until later, and felt unusually embarrassed the first time Hana complained she needed to go the bathroom…

* * *

Match after match.

Hour after hour.

Akane lit the candle time after time, horrified at the thought of being in the dark again. They slept and woke and talked and, in Hana's case, pleaded and yelled at the guard. It was getting increasingly hard for Akane to control her temper and not throw an insult his way. She just wanted to take the bloody bowl and fling it to his head, before she remembered to calm herself down, and ate the dish obediently.

After all, it was the only food they had.

The two didn't know how much time passed by, how many days (_for __they were certain it was days now_) they were locked up.

The main question, the one keeping Akane restless and itching, was- why were they even abducted in the first place? She talked to Hana about it a lot and found out that it wasn't Hana who asked Kabuto to come with him...

"What? Wait a minute there, **he** was the one who asked **me**," the dark-skinned girl said, refusing to look her older companion into the eyes, "And… And I… I s-said yes."

Akane said nothing out of the simple reason that there was nothing to be said.

But why did Kabuto ask that to Hana? What did he want with her? What did he want with them? Was this all because of her slip? That didn't make any sense. If he asked her how she knew, she could just say that she only guessed, seeing how all of the other ninjas wore a Sound headband and she couldn't see his.

_Yes, that should work. A perfect excuse._

But where was the medic? Why did he leave them there? What was he waiting for?

Questions, questions, and more questions.

It was all so frustrating!

The eighteen-year-old searched her head for any idea, anything at all, because she wasn't the kind of person who liked to be left in the dark.

Metaphorically or not.

* * *

The sound of footsteps. Time for food.

_If he brought that damned rice again, I swear I'll—_

Akane didn't finish her thought because, for once, on the other side of the bars wasn't who she had been expecting .

What she saw was silver hair and a smug look on his face.

Kabuto.

Two ninjas stood on each of his sides, masked and threatening.

"Tie them up," Kabuto commanded as soon as they neared the cell, not giving them a chance to curse at him. The lock clicked, and before they knew it, Hana's and Akane's hands were forced behind their backs, ropes tightened around their wrists and cutting into their skin.

"You!" Hana glared at the medic, but all she got in return was an uninterested look, Akane struggled against the shinobi holding her kicking and biting, before she was jerked by the rope that tied her hands together. Barely understanding what was going on, they were dragged out of the cell and into a long stone hall.

"Bring them here," Kabuto instructed, tone neutral yet somehow still sharp.

The rope was jerked again and the girls followed unwillingly, pulled onto their feet. Not a word more, and they were taken up the stairs and into a labyrinth of halls, almost too quickly for their minds to keep up, passing rows and rows of candles with each hesitant and forced step.

The air was warmer here, heavily smelling of wax and ash.

"W-Where are you taking us?" Akane asked (_stop stuttering!_), dread filling her limbs, teeth grinding together in a mixture of anger and fright. She tried to squirm her hands out of the ninja's, tugging and twisting her elbows, and yet her attempts remained completely futile.

_Please no._

_Not him, not him, not him…_

Kabuto inclined his head over his shoulder as he led the way. His glasses held an ominous spark to them when reflected with fire.

"There will be time for questions later," a ghost of a smile returned to his lips, pale and amiable and positively sickening, "After all… You don't want to keep my master waiting, do you, Akane-san?"

* * *

**Translation: ****Nihil lacrima citius arescit- Nothing dries more quickly than a tear**

**A/N: Yes, I know this chapter is quite boring… but let's be real here- being locked up in a dark cell can not be called exactly 'interesting'. :-/ **

**Please leave a review. They make me happy.  
**


	12. Rara avis

**Chapter twelve:**

**Rara avis**

**A/N:This chapter is a little longer, because the next chapter of TPoL won't be updated for the next two weeks. Long story short, I'm going to a Science camp for a week and I won't have time to write there. So don't worry, I didn't die or suddenly decide to abandon the fic; it will be updated regularly as soon as I come back.**

**That being said, enjoy! **

* * *

_Nonononononono…_

Akane stared at the back of the medic's head, frozen, the first hints of panic piercing her skin like needles. Sharp. Numbing.

_My God we're going to die._

"Let us go, Kabuto!" Hana threatened, enraged with him ignoring her. "Where are you taking us? Just leave us alone! You-" she yelled and cursed, putting more strength into her words than into her muscles to try and get away. Unfortunately, Hana had a tendency to push at the wrong moment… Akane would have been very impressed with the usually cowardice girl if it weren't for the fact that what she was doing was unwittingly _stupid._

The medic-ninja remained silent, paying Hana's offensive ranting no notice whatsoever, like she wasn't even worthy of his attention. He merely led them further down the hallway, the air getting hotter on their pale cheeks as they proceeded. Akane could feel beads of sweat breaking out on her temples and she itched to wipe them away. Was it the temperature or the fear that caused them? She didn't care to know.

All she knew was that they were being led to their execution.

"—and what the hell's wrong with you, acting the 'nice nerdy guy' earlier? Good thing I can see now that you're really a slimy piece of sh-" Hana stopped mid-way before making her point when Kabuto stopped before a tall double-door in front of them. Unhesitant, he pushed one side and walked inside. Forced in by the ninja, the girls followed as well.

Before Akane could even dare to take a look at the room they'd just entered there were hands on her back and a painful kick to her legs. She buckled and crumpled to the ground; her knees were rendered bloody and bruised as she roughly landed on them. Beside her, she heard Hana squealing at the treatment with a small cry erupting from her throat.

Dazed, Akane sat on her knees, bent and thrashing like a snake in the dirt. The rope was cutting into her wrists, leaving purple bruises as she tried to straighten herself up and raise her eyes off the stony ground. The room was dark and, as expected, illuminated with candles, which cast long shadows that unnerved her senses. The smell of wax was making her dizzy and the thickness of the air made her eyes water at the edges.

"Well, Kabuto… What have you brought me here?" a voice called from somewhere in front of her; a voice deep like gravel grating against stone, strange and yet disturbingly familiar. Fear slithered down her spine, making all the hair on her body bristle as goosebumps rose on her flesh.

"I hope your travel was as prosperous as mine was… Orochimaru-sama," she heard Kabuto speak from above her, his tone somewhat softer, more respectful. A dry chuckle came as a reply, cooling the too hot air that stuck to her lungs like tar, suffocating her.

_Orochimaru._

Fear scratched her inner rib-cage like sand against metal. Her whole being broke into a fight or flight reaction, adrenaline pumping through her veins, irises widening to the size of saucers. _You have to get out of here_, her mind screamed at her, as her body kept twitching for an escape, _You are going to die!_

Kabuto shuffled beside her, but she couldn't see what he was doing from her awkward position. "I've looked into the matter of which I've informed you earlier… about the Futari village in the Land of Fire," the silver-haired man started and Akane stilled, waiting eagerly to hear what he would say next. As long as she couldn't see any of the ninja surrounding her and kept her gaze focused on the stone beneath her, she knew she should try and concentrate on what was being said.

"May I remind you that, a few months ago, I informed you of encountering a suspicious ninja when I stopped in the village's inn…" the medic continued, "Our reasoning was that Konoha had finally found out about our little… guinea- pig gathering in that part of the country and had sent an investigation patrol."

_A suspicious ninja? Patrols? What... What the hell is he talking about? _Akane listened, completely stupefied. There were no "patrols" in Futari! The medic had obviously gone bonkers!

"Have you filed a report on this? You'd better not have summoned us all the way across the country for something as pathetic as Konoha shinobi, Kabuto…" Orochimaru's voice warned, low and sibilant, with an impatient edge to it.

_Us? Who's us? Is Sasuke here as well?_ Akane tried her best to pick up as much information as she could. Two things were clear to her as of now. One: their capture wasn't an order from Orochimaru, seeing how he didn't have a clue as to who they were, which meant it must have been solely Kabuto's act. Secondly: for some reason, Kabuto found them important enough to summon his master from miles away to speak to him personally…

None of these conclusions, however, helped her in any way to pacify her frightened heart nor to answer her questions which kept piling by the second.

When Kabuto spoke again, Akane could almost hear the smirk in his voice. "I haven't, Orochimaru-sama. Patience, I beg you. I assure you that this is by far much more important."

A moment of silence followed Kabuto's declaration and suddenly Akane could very much _sense_ the Snake Sannin's curious look on her back.

"Do tell."

A shiver bolted down her spine.

"I'm certain Orochimaru-sama remembers that we based our conclusion about the target on the fact that she was concealing her chakra. Seeing how civilians are incapable of doing this, our primary impression was that she was, apparently, a trained kunoichi, " she could clearly hear the man above her take a breath as he proceeded with his explanations, "That, however, didn't explain _why_ she was doing so when she was not in the hiding. So I returned to the village for the second time to clarify this puzzle. Heh, maybe she was just a clumsy Leaf Genin, an idiot like all of them, poorly lacking the basic ability to think…" "Except for you, of course, Sasuke-kun," he added in an apologetic tone.

_So the Uchiha is here after all… _the girl thought, _He's certainly quiet._

Kabuto stopped there, like an actor for a dramatic effect. If Sasuke thought anything of his comment, he didn't verbally acknowledge it. Nothing could be heard except for flames crackling and the quiet wheezing noise Akane suspected came from Hana. The poor girl must have been scared to death and yet the older girl could do absolutely nothing to comfort her now.

"We were wrong though," she saw Kabuto's left hand gesturing to his side, to Hana, the melody of his voice turning haughtier by the minute, "I befriended the girl and came about the very source of information. What I found out was fairly disappointing and only confused me further. The girl, now known to me as 'Hana', was obviously not a kunoichi, lacking the necessary physical constitution as well as mental requirements for this profession. Most noticeably, she lacked any kind of stealth or information gathering skills needed for that kind of investigation."

There was an indignant sniff from her left and Akane prayed to every holy deity that Hana wouldn't do or say anything stupid.

_Please be quiet. Don't do anything reckless. Don't talk. Don't even __**breathe**__._

"Apart from that riddle which remained with my discovery, something else caught my eye… or rather_- someone_."

...Akane stopped breathing.

"The next time I visited Futari, another girl entered the inn. Her face held quite a strange expression upon seeing me. There was a –how should I put it?- a flash of_ recognition_ in her eyes and a scowl of mistrust on her lips. No, the other girl was most likely not a kunoichi either, and yet…" he made a small pauze, no doubt looking over to her now, "And yet her chakra was concealed all the same. I must say this picked my imagination the most and I had to find out more about the duo. The older girl's name was Akane, as I found out before from Hana's ramblings. She is the one that made my trip to the Futari all the more interesting the third time I traveled there…"

Akane didn't like where this was going. Oh no, not at all. While she now knew what was _really_ behind Kabuto's constant appearances and interest, it seemed as more questions swam to the surface.

_Does… Does this mean Hana and I don't have chakra? __**That's**__ what this was all about? From the very beginning?  
_

Orochimaru didn't say a word as he listened to his right-hand man and Akane was grateful for that. Hana _really_ didn't need to be more freaked out than she already was…

"It was all for the sake of the experiment, really. All I needed was a sample of the girl's blood and check if it wasn't some kind of rare bloodline limit that would benefit your ambitions. The target of my choice was, naturally, the younger girl. I already had her full confidence, while the other one seemed to always be on guard for some reason I had yet to discover. I checked Hana's reflexes by dropping a bottle –she failed the test miserably, no ninja would've been so slow- and collected gauze with her blood under the excuse of cleaning her wound. This Akane made quite out of show it, _for some reason_ running to an immediate conclusion that I was _hurting_ the girl," she could see Kabuto's hand gesticulating to her like to a particularly colorful lizard in a terrarium and she gritted her teeth at such an _insult_. Her pride was kicking her repeatedly in the gut, shoving away her fears and better judgment. There were multiple pairs of eyes on her bent form now and she continuously chanted in her head.

_I must not let my temper get the better of me, I must not, I must not…_

The medic continued with his explanation, "Upon returning to the base, I immediately checked the sample I acquired and the results were shocking. Mixed with the regular blood cells were, to my surprise, _dead chakra cells_ as well."

_...excuse me?_

"What?" she heard Orochimaru hiss then, voice slightly raised and, dare she say it, surprised. "Kabuto, are you saying that the girl's chakra is located in her blood… and not her chakra system?"

_What the hell is that even supposed to mean?_

Akane didn't know **that** much about the Naruto world biology. Heck, she wasn't even passably good at biology back home! Hana's harsh breathing subsided somewhat though, and Akane was sure that her interest in medicine dominated her fear.

"Yes, my Lord," Kabuto sounded smugly proud of himself, "In all our years of experimenting and bending the human anatomy I've never seen anything like it. You understand why I took my liberty with this mission? My next step of action was to call you to our base nearest to the Futari village before I bring the subject here with me. As every teenage girl, Hana was naive and compliant, quickly agreeing to my proposition."

There was a moment of pause.

"But then," his posture turned to Akane, his eyes burning holes at the back of her head, "_something_ came up."

_..._

_Oh God._

_No._

_Oh no no no no no no fuck no!_

"Does it have something to do," Orochimaru spoke, slowly, with a hint of humor in his voice, "with _this_ one again?"

There was a light _click _of Kabuto's glasses as he adjusted them on the bridge of his nose.

"Why yes, Orochimaru-sama, it does," his amused words were now directed towards her as well, "In my own way, I elicited a certain declaration from _this _one by taunting her. _Somehow_, the one named Akane enlightened me that she confidently _knew_ that I came from the Hidden Sound village, even though I was wearing my old **Leaf** headband at the time. She _knew_ it. And I can't seem to figure out," he turned wholly to her, words stretched and lazy, "how is that?"

. . .

Panic.

_Get out of here! Get up! Run! __**Get away!**_

Ice.

The air was hot, hot, **too freaking hot** but she choked on cold watery fear that filled her mouth and drowned any form of rational thinking.

_All that time, he really had no idea, _that pessimisticly wicked voice laughed at her ear, spitting and hissing, _which means __**you **__are responsible for everything that had happened__**. **__You didn't protect Hana, you poor stupid girl. You just lowered the axe sooner on your own necks. You poor, stupid __**child**__,_ it snickered.

Akane sat, frozen, glued to the spot as she heard steps, deliberately slow, almost **predatory**, coming towards her. A voice followed them, growing closer and closer, hoarse and slick at the same time.

"So you went to kill a fly and brought me back a bird," an amused chuckle, "You're as convenient as ever, Kabuto."

The steps stopped a little ahead of her, and with a slight tilt of her head the frightened girl could see the wooden sandals that the figure wore, white feet standing out starkly on the black of the stone beneath.

"Aren't you going to answer the question, girl?" The man demanded in a tone that implied a smile and Akane felt like dying on the spot. It was one thing watching the show on TV- then she had thought about how Orochimaru was actually a great villain, interesting design, with a proper amount of freakishness and evilness- but standing before him now left her completely speechless with fear. Sensing, more than seeing, his impatience at her lack of response, she took a deep breath and, keeping her head lowered, voiced her already planned excuse.

_Breathe in… Breathe out…_

"I… I guessed. T-The other ninja wore Sound headbands and I couldn't see his, so-so I concluded…" she trailed off as Orochimaru's laughter echoed around the room, a horrifying, raspy sound that twisted Akane's guts and made her feel like running away until her legs gave out. Despite the urge, though, she stayed put, squeezing her eyes tightly shut and trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to control her trembling.

Once his hilarity subsided, Orochimaru spoke, suppressing another fit of laughter. "How old are you, child?"

Akane stopped dead in her tracks, failing to see the humor, but then she remembered that this particular man was known for episodes of excessive merriment, almost as drastic as his infamous rages.

"Eighteen," she said quickly in one breath, knowing better than to proceed in her silence, but seeing no point in his question either way.

_Well, I'll be… I'm having an actual conversation with Orochimaru, _a ridiculous thought occurred to her, completely inappropriate for the current scenario. She was on her knees, bleeding, hungry, dirty and probably smelling like shit, as even the Snake Sannin was keeping a certain distance from her. The time spent in cell waiting for His Royal Highness to make an appearance was not very kind to her…

"Eighteen?" Orochimaru repeated extremely slowly, another chuckle grating its way from his throat. "Ahh, so young and yet so proficient..." his words turned darker, "at _lying, _aren't you?"

Akane's heart skipped a beat. Horror rubbed at her skin, rendering it chilling and unfeeling.

"I-I (_stop stuttering_!) a- am not lyi-"

"Raise your head," a command was issued before her response was complete.

... she continued to stare at his feet, unmoving. The long-haired girl tried to press her nose further against the ground, not in submission, but defiance.

_No._

Her pride. She wouldn't let it be taken from her. It was a trait she was known for in _her world_, a trait that she had had to discard so many times since she came to _this one_. She clung to it, refusing to be stripped down. _No._ It felt good thinking about that word and imagining how it would sound on her lips. And still, voicing it out loud might make everything real, too frighteningly real, and Akane wasn't ready for that.

A moment of tense silence ensued and she could literally _feel_her heart in her throat, pulsating and hurting, and **God it hurts _so much!_**

"Obstinate fool. I'm not fond of repeating myself, girl…" an angry hiss. Another step was taken into her direction and Akane reflexively tried to edge away. Then she froze. Something was making its way around her waist, shoulders, neck, something smooth and slick and-

A snake.

There was a loud shriek from her left and Akane automatically shot her look that way, raising her head fully for the first time since entering the room. She saw Hana curled on the floor some space from her, at Kabuto's feet, shaking like a madman as another huge yellow snake slithered up her arm. The once beautiful yukata was covered in black sticky dirt, disgusting and hanging from her body. Hana's hair was disheveled; face was twisted in utter terror, mouth gaping open and strangled cries spilling from it.

"A-a-a s—snake! T-t-take it off! Oh please! Take it-" she whimpered, eyes glassed with tears. Her shoulders were shaking in pure mind-binding, body-snatching fear. Kabuto did nothing but watch her from the above, the most indifferent look on his face.

"Poor girl," Orochimaru's voice cooed, sounding thoroughly amused, "Trembling like a frightened rabbit. Surely you would like me to call off my little pet, now wouldn't you?"

**Fury.**

More angered about the dangerous reptilian over Hana's neck than frightened over the one on hers, Akane turned and glared at the Snake Sannin, finally looking at him like she was requested. Sacrificing her dignity like a lizard's severed tail.

Serpentine eyes. Sickeningly yellow eyes flashed in the dark like two suns, golden and yet rendered of any form of warmth and light. Cruel, ambitious, and intimidating. At her compliance Orochimaru's pale face split into a smile and yet there was nothing friendly about it, nothing comforting nor pleasant. High cheekbones, strong jaw, canines protruding. His face was crooked, sharp and leering.

_This man is, _Akane thought_, full of the most extreme contradictions. This man is far too dangerous for me to handle._

Behind him, Akane could distinguish a throne-like chair and, beside it, a shadow amongst the shadows, motionless and observing them. Two red eyes._ The Sharingan,_ the thought occurred to her. Then. _Uchiha Sasuke._

Orochimaru started to pace around her, each step like a 'tick' of a clock echoing around the chamber. He circled her, a snake curling around its prey, readying itself for the attack.

"Now then," the pale man spoke directly to her now, his eyes traveling down from her dirty face to her poor clothes, "How _did_ you know, hmm? Answer me. Or die."

He scoffed, "It's fairly simple, my bird."

The snake hissed into her ear, its thin forked tongue licking her earlobe and positioning itself for a strike. Hana was crying now, she could hear, forced breaths released into the flaming air.

Akane smashed her eyes shut. She couldn't feel her hands, tied and bloodless behind her back. She couldn't feel her legs, buckled and numb beneath her, raw skin starting to itch with infection. But worse of all, she could feel her strength, her courage, nowhere within her. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and she felt so ashamed of herself. So powerless. Weak.

_I'm not going to cry, I'm not going to cry, I'm not, I'm not…._

Her mind raced. If she told him, then what? Orochimaru would lock them up, interrogate her, and kill her in the end. If she didn't, he would kill her. And if, by some miracle, he spared them, Kabuto certainly wouldn't. They were going to be dissected in a lab, Kabuto's hands buried in her bloody torso, looking for something he didn't know there even was. The conclusion was the same. It was inevitable. **They were going to die**. Lots of pain included. _Death, death, death._

But if there was a way to make it quick… To make it as painless as possible…?

Her final answer came as a hitched breath, an emotionless whisper spoken to the shadows.

"I… I will die."

With pride intact. While looking him in the eyes. Panic eating her from the inside and spitting the remnants of her resolve.

Right.

Into.

His.

_Face._

But the rebellious thoughts did little for the hysteria exploding in her insides. Akane opened her eyes the moment Orochimaru stopped right in front of her and the world seized to exist. It was just her, her executor, and a snake on her neck, scaly and cold. The hissing in her ear was getting louder; her heart was obnoxious in her head, bumping like drums, making her shake from the sheer intensity. And like a soprano to that whole orchestra, the mocking tone that voiced her fears and insecurities sang along to the slow funeral march.

_You_ _are going to dieee! You are going to dieee!_

The Snake Sannin stood an arm-length away in front of her, looming over her kneeling form. His unblinking golden gaze slashed at her and Akane sat, petrified, waiting for it to happen. His face turned into a displeased scowl, as her answer obviously wasn't the one he anticipated, but almost instantly morphed into a smirk.

"What a pity," he gave her a smile of fake distress, "Ridiculous girl. But… If you prefer death…"

His pet finished the sentence for him as it draped itself tighter around shoulders, hissing the promise of agony it was to bring her. Akane stared in front of her, willing herself not to close her eyes. She now visibly shook, but she tried and tried to keep her head high. She was scared out of her mind and yet, she persistently tried to make it look as if she wasn't.

Deceit. Fake. Akane was starting to become_ such_ a liar.

The snake's long body started to move, strong muscles rippling across her own, a frightened breath, and another and—

"**I'll tell you!"**

. . .

* * *

It stopped.

Everything just… stopped.

No hissing. No pain.

And to Akane's complete _shock_, she was still alive and staring into the space in front of her.

"I—I'll tell you! STOP! I'll tell you, I'll tell you, **I'll tell you**…" somebody screamed and cried and whimpered, repeating the sentence over and over and over frantically.

_It wasn't Akane._

The eighteen-year-old started to cough the air out of her lungs, so impossibly relieved and disturbed at the same time. She coughed and coughed, like she'd just escaped a drowning (_blue mass screeching around her; lungs screaming_) and without the support of her hands, she felt like she was about to keel over and hit her head on the stone.

The weight on her shoulders had disappeared. The predatory reptilian was gone.

"Yes, little one, you were going to say something?" Orochimaru's sugary voice inquired, stepping from Akane and sliding to her left.

To Hana.

Akane straightened herself up as fast as her tied limbs allowed her. Orochimaru was nearing her small friend who cried and trembled, the snake's fangs an inch from her slender neck. The young girl was an unattractive mass with tear streaked face and hollow eyes.

"I-I'll tell you… how… she knew…" Hana repeated, breathlessly, dangerously swaying on her knees, like she was going to faint from the effort she put into addressing the terrifying man. Akane looked over at her, eyes wide and incredulous, the girl's words registering in her brain with a delay from shock.

_Did... did she just say…?_

"Hana, NO!" Akane yelled then, voice crazed and screeching, "W-What do you think you're doing? Don't you dare tell him anything, you moron! I'll die! I'm… (_a lie_) I'm ready to die, Hana!"

"Well I'm NOT!" Hana met her eyes, dark and void of that miraculous energy they used to possess. Eyes wide and seeping tears onto her terrified face. "I'm NOT Akane! I-I do-don't want to d-die… I DON'T want to…"

Orochimaru laughed. "That's right, little one. Don't listen to her. Tell me," he purred, topaz eyes glittering hungrily.

"**Damn** you, Hana, don't you DARE!" Akane all but screamed at her, fear greater than anything she'd ever felt in her life, "I can't be responsible for all those people! I just can't! So don't you DARE tell him a thing or I'll-!"

"You'll do what? Kill me? **Hah!"** Hana screamed back at her, voice carrying the note of a bitter laugh, "I don't care, you hear me? I. Don't. Care!" Her face was red with anger, fear, panic and a whole lot of intense emotions Akane couldn't discern. Her voice lowered to a pathetic whisper.

"I… I just don't want to die, Akane…"

With that said, the younger girl's mouth opened again, lips forming shaky words.

_Shut up! Shut up! Stop! Shut** the hell up**!_ Akane screamed herself hoarse for her to stop till her tired jaw dangled uselessly. Her eyes wide with pure electrifying shock.

Candles crackled. Wax melted. Reeking.

_(You are__ going to dieee- You are going to dieee.)_

"A- Akane is…"

Hana's words left her throat and echoed through the room.

The air burned.

* * *

**Translation: Rara avis- A rare bird (an unusual, uncommon, or exceptional person or thing; a rarity)**

**A/N: Well, this changes the whole perspective on some previous events, no? Oh, and lookie here- a cliffhanger! How I love these…**

**This is my first time writing Orochimaru and I must say THAT WAS FREAKIN' AWESOME! Seriously, I couldn't believe how much evil inappropriate fun I had writing the psycho. My very first villain writing, wooo! You should try it sometimes. I hope he wasn't OOC, and please tell me if he was for future reference?**

**Just click down here and review!  
**


	13. Scientia potestas est

**Chapter thirteen:**

**Scientia potestas est**

**A/N: Hey, I'm back! I'm really sorry for the long disappearance. I bring you the thirteenth chapter of the story, and—it's a long one. Excited?**

**Seeing that it was pretty obvious by the history of used clichés, you probably could have easily figured out what Hana was going to say at the end of the last chapter. BUT. It's always the **_**reaction **_**that's more interesting than the action itself...  
**

* * *

_"**Akane is…**_

_**a prophetess!"**_

**. . .  
**

Hana's words rang with resounding finality, melted, and then burned into ashes. As such, they choked, lingering in the air, hanging much like a pale human corpse.

(_But whose corpse is it gonna be?_)

Aghast, Akane thought she could hear a sound of her own jaw hitting the floor.

_Of all the **idiotic-**-!_

In the next moment there was a kunai under Hana's throat, the hilt clutched in Kabuto's hand and the shiny tip against the irregular pumping of her vein.

"Who do you think you're dealing with?" the question was asked so quietly that Akane thought she'd never heard Kabuto sound so_ furious. _The thought was expressively disturbing, enough to make her reconsider which ninja she was afraid of the most in the room. There was a terrified gasp, followed by a strangled sob from the younger girl as Kabuto lowered the knife on her skin, cold metal grazing the edges of her warm neck.

Akane stared at the scene, paralyzed and still unable to comprehend what had just taken place. Her every muscle was tense to the point of snapping. Her facial expression was the one of unadulterated shock: lips parted and raw from screaming, eyes wide-open in horror and abeyance. The silence was ensnaring, hot and daring on her skin. _Burning._ As shock faded from her mind, the first thought that hit her was that _well of course_ Kabuto and Orochimaru wouldn't believe such an asinine story as Hana's, for both were very much _scientists_. It was stupid to even make up such a reason, let alone use it with the duo!

Fear crept up her spine yet again as she threw a look at Orochimaru. His slit eyes were narrowed dangerously at the younger girl and Akane grew afraid for their lives more than ever.

(_Ahh, but this feeling is never to end, now is it?_)

"Do you want me to kill these two for this... this _insult**,**_ Orochimaru-sama?" Kabuto suggested lightly and Akane's stomach clenched at the calm yet somehow eager note in his voice. A fiery glint from his glasses, Hana's whimper and a trail of blood between the knife and her neck were more than enough of a guarantee of his intentions.

And all Akane could do was sit with her shoulders slumped and a downcast, horrified expression, practically at a loss for words. Mad with fear. Absolutely helpless.

_This is not happening, it can't be happening, this is not happening…_

Then Orochimaru shifted his withering glare from Hana, brushing (_slicing_) Akane for a mere second, before he turned on his heel. A clank of geta and he was walking away, his back turned to them and long black hair swaying with each step.

"Take them to the lab," he snapped over his shoulder, losing all interest, "Do what you wish with them, Kabuto…"

It took exactly five second for his poisonous words to sink down Akane's stomach, making it churn as she digested them.

_No._

"K- Kabuto-kun! NO! Please- Yo-You can't do this! I-I told you!" Hana cried and thrashed when the medic-nin picked her up by the neck and pushed her to the two Sound ninja waiting by the wall. He only let out a sort of a tsk-ing sound, between pity and mockery and made a turn, disappearing from Akane's field of vision. She stiffened.

_Where did he-_

Hands grabbed her tied wrists from the back and pulled upward, making her stumble to her feet from the involuntary bow. Akane felt her ligaments snapping from being in such a position for so long and had to clench her teeth in hissing pain.

"Hurt?" was whispered gently into her ear, sounding far too sincere to be coming from the white-haired medic.

_(You are hurting now, and you were hurt before, and there's __**nothing**__ you can do to prevent being hurt again)_

Ground felt hard under her feet, a brief sensation of losing conscience breezed though her mind, perspective changed and then she realized: Orochimaru had dismissed them They were being dragged away. They were being dragged away into a laboratory for experimentation. Somewhere near her, a girl was screaming.

"Ka-Kabuto-k-kun! Don't! I told you! I** told you-**"

Akane felt her thoughts, painful, like a toothache. There was nothing in her mind but a swirling mass of panic and despair.

They were going to be tested on. Not allowed to die, but forced to live through blood, pain and medicine. Torture, day after day after day. She- She had to stop him. She had to save Hana. She promised… _She promised she wouldn't let anything bad happen to her!_

And…

And if this was the price to pay…

A blade of Kabuto's breath on the skin of her neck—Burning pain on her wrist—In her lungs, nostrils, eyes—

"**A white snake's skin!"**

**. . .**

The words left Akane much too quickly and much more theatrical than she intended them to be. There was a barely noticeable flinch in her captor's otherwise firm hold. Kabuto's finger buried in her shoulder and she suppressed a displeased breath as he, almost tentatively, he leaned in next to her ear.

"What?" the medic-nin inquired and Akane could swear she heard Orochimaru's retreating steps slowly come to a halt. _Did he hear me?_

"A-a white... s-s-snake's skin," she sucked air through her teeth, trying to calm herself down, "That's… That's what the dark-haired boy found on his parents' grave…"

Saliva collected under her tongue, but her throat felt dry, _oh so dry_ that Akane felt like it was crackling with each syllable.

_I must keep Hana alive, I must keep us alive, I must…_

Nobody spoke as Kabuto stopped in place, with the ninja holding Hana following his motion. Confusion. Wailing of fire. Sobs.

Hana... was crying.

Akane knew somewhere in her mind that she was walking on dangerous ground here, but she continued to speak nevertheless, struggling to erase those frightening sounds. She put great effort not to let her voice shake.

"He asked his teacher what it was and the man explained to the young boy... his prodigy student... that it was very rare-"

"Alright, that's enough," Kabuto interrupted, having heard enough nonsense. The rope on her wrists was tightened and jerked once more, and she was pushed forward. "Come on."

"— it was a symbol of fortune-"

"Quiet down," yanked by her hands and unprepared, she lost her balance and fell back onto the ground. Blood was flowing freely from her knees now, decorating the dark stone in red, flowery stains.

"-and rebirth!" Akane finished, desperate, only few thoughts registering in her mind. _I must keep us alive. I must keep us—_

"What is the meaning of this?"

_Orochimaru._

His husky timbre resonated from behind her and, surprisingly to the situation, Akane felt completely_ dizzy_ with relief. There were steps in her direction again (_that disgusting sound of being approached when weakest_) and Akane tuned back, raising her head to meet Orochimaru's demanding gaze.

"What did you just say, girl?" it was as if his dark voice coiled around her, dominating and expectant.

Her pride screamed at her to ignore the question, him, her _humiliation_, but her reason triumphed in the end. What she was about to do was insane, an utterly ludicrous idea, she knew that, but Akane was desperate enough to try _anything._ There was one prophecy in Naruto world, as much as she recalled from the series, and it was the one told to Jiraiya, when that frog had **a dream**. Maybe… Just one hopeful _maybe_ Jiraiya shared this with his ex-best friend, or _maybe_ Orochimaru, being as studious as he was, was just a little, _just the tinniest bit,_ open to the idea of visions. This was all a far stretch, she acknowledged, but in that completely desperate moment, the girl clinging to that last hope, it seemed at least one percent probable.

And that one per cent of chance of their survival was enough. She had to try _something_. Anything! She couldn't let Hana suffer anymore... it was her responsibility. It was all her fault!

Akane swallowed the gathered liquid in her mouth, terrified for a moment that she might choke on it.

"The boy kept the skin of the snake…" she continued her tale, carefully choosing her words before the dangerous man, "Under glass and care, as an everlasting symbol of his ambitions... of his goals... of his entire life's work...The boy's name was Orochimaru, and the old man, his teacher Hiruzen Sarutobi, was murdered… by his… _no_…" She looked up at him, "...by **your** hands."

The silence that fell after her words felt almost unnatural. Akane continued to stare straight in Orochimaru's haunting eyes, satisfied when she saw a momentary spark _(disbelief, anger and something she couldn't identify but __**prayed**__ wasn't killing intent) _flash in those animalistic eyes. But just as quick as it appeared, the spark evaporated (_drowned in the abhorring gold_) and the leering mask was perfectly in place once again.

"Oh? And you know this _how_?" Orochimaru spoke then, slowly, as if containing himself. It made her think that he was trying to suppress the urge to close the distance between them, barely consisting of five steps, and wrap his murderous long fingers around her neck. If he so wished, Akane realized, he could snap it with nothing but a flick of his wrist. A powerful shudder ran down her body and ended at the base of her spine, leaving her trembling and panting. This man... was _terrifying_. Eventually, she licked her lips and spoke, when she was certain her voice wouldn't fail her.

"I saw it... in my dream last night."

How mindlessly _ridiculous_ it sounded even to her ears! The words didn't come out at all like she imagined they would and Akane suddenly wished she had choked on them before they ever left her throat! They were just so unbelievable. Silly! And unfortunately for her, she wasn't the only one thinking so.

"Preposterous liar," a quick blow was sent to her upper-body, between the stomach and breasts, knocking the air out of her lungs. Akane instantly doubled over on her knees, while Kabuto stepped away from her, continuing in the most lighthearted tone, "I'm sorry Orochimaru-sama for this girl's rambling."

The ache made her nauseous, bringing involuntary tears in her eyes; her hand instinctively went to clutch her abdomen to will the pain away. Her whole rib cage shook as if it were smashed, rib grating against rib, lungs wheezing and screeching.

"After all, she's just a peasant girl," she heard him add not a moment before his foot was on her hand, _crushing_ it into the stone floor.

(_Your __palms are eaten with acid; skin ripped and rough; nails bristled sharp and dirty—yes, a peasant girl is all you __**are**__ and __**can be**__ here_)

"Akane!" Hana cried after her but the older girl couldn't reply, because in the next moment pain blossomed in her fingers, drilling through her bones and speeding to her brain. Unable to suppress the scream that had built up, it ripped through the air, a short wounded howl Akane had never heard herself make before. Already weakened in body from hunger and lack of sleep, mind buzzing with thoughts of death, black dots and freckles clouded her vision like a swarm of flies, because it hurt, **damn it hurt so freaking much—!**

"Now, settle down, Kabuto," Orochimaru released a breathy chuckle that sounded more pleasant than it had any right to, "Let her speak. I must say I'm absolutely _dying_ to know more about the girl's earlier announcement."

It was incredibly hard to distinguish sarcasm from a plain statement with this man, especially through waves of liquid agony pushing through her muscles. Hence Akane didn't even bother. She kept silent, biting her lower lip in a vain attempt to gather her thoughts as well as to keep back her whimpers, but failing at both. It felt as if some invisible hand was clenching around her throat, up to the point where she was suffocating.

"Care to indulge us?" the Snake Sannin's words dripped with amusement. His almost cheerful expression, so unfitting for the grave matter at hand, was making her stomach convulse. Akane had to all but force herself to speak in that moment and not break down into sobs.

"I... I _don't know_ if I'm a prophetess, but…" it was an admirable start; however, the one that could get her in trouble could always be the next sentence she conjured, "At night, when I'm not in the conscious mind, I see… Places, happenings, people… Their pasts, presents, futu-"

"Are you claiming to be a kind of a soothsayer?" Kabuto cut in harshly, not a small dose of skepticism in his words.

"I am not claiming to be _anything_," Akane's reply was a silent blizzard- she was truly at her wits end with this slime of a man. She couldn't feel her hand from his previous onslaught, so she left it laying beside her, numb. "I'm only saying how it _is._"

"Nevertheless of what you call it, all of the girl's previous claims were, indeed, correct."

The satiny darkness of Orochimaru's words was almost tangible, but it brought a pulse of a hope into the girl's heart.

Hana's shoulders slumped in unhidden relief, a long breath escaping her throat. Kabuto's eyes shot up to his master's, no doubt thinking the older man must be joking.

"And in such detail, too… I'm inclined to believe you, girl, at least for a moment…" Orochimaru gave her a screwed predatory grin and once again Akane was unable to recognize the truth or falseness in his words. However, in any case, Orochimaru's supposed 'trust' wasn't even the slightest guarantee that they would live to see tomorrow. She had to think up something, and she had to do it _fast!_

"Let's make a deal then," the boldness of her words surprised her and suddenly Akane had a horrifying feeling that her situation was only taking a turn for the worse, and not for the better as she had previously presumed. There was something _binding_ in her words, something that made her wary. And yet, this had to be done; she was certain that there was not a perfectly safe way around the minefield set for her no matter what she said or did.

Orochimaru paused for only a second.

"Well, this is certainly interesting," the man tilted his head forward, unfolding one of his arms and raising it to his mouth, with his thumb absently brushing the bottom of his chin. A small smile was playing at the corners of his lips, partially hidden from view by his curled fingers. "I don't remember ever so _willingly_ being proposed a bargain. It is usually I who is the indicator of such delicate matters."

The subtle emphasis he put on 'willingly' was interpreted by Akane like a peck of mock, whereas in reality it was something by far more menacing. The girl, however, shrugged it off, too perplexed to translate his every word with a double meaning.

_(a mistake you will regret)_

"Knowledge is power," Akane choked out the magical sentence, the one that was sure to catch the Snake Sannin's interest, "And I **will** share my knowledge with you." There was an almost palpable '_but' _in the air and with no pretense, Orochimaru voiced it out loud.

"But for that, I need to keep you alive for a period of time, now don't I? Ah, my little bird seems to have quite an agile mind," the girl tensed at his choice of words. She suspected that the flattery coming from this man was more often than not only as smooth as the edge of a poisonous sword.

"All I'm asking is for you to spare Hana," despite the cool of her words, she was still shivering dreadfully, and the bad air of the room felt like a knife-blade down her throat every time she breathed in, "She must not be harmed in _any_ way, physically or mentally. Keep us alive and… And I will tell you whatever I see—"

Her voice died in her throat as Orochimaru gave a low, humorous chuckle, "My, my, what confidence you must possess to make such demands!" A cold glow of his yellow eyes froze her insides, "I do wonder, however, what it is based on. If the girl is not to be harmed, then there is no way for us to inspect the biological riddle her anatomy represents. It is not every day we find such a fine specimen of human with warped chakra, you see… _Except_…" He stopped there long enough to innocently shrug his shoulders and give her a long, smirking look, "Well. You could, of course, volunteer to take her place."

It was more of a statement than a question. The man was too unscrupulously smart for her to think of any other alternative. It pissed her off, the way he made it as if he was doing her a_ favour, _ as if it was in her_ interest_ to agree to this. In a way, it really was: Akane knew he couldn't kill her in his experiments for the sake of her knowledge, and also Hana was to stay alive as long as she shared that knowledge with him. What a complicated, manipulative web of demands they knitted together.

"Then I will do it."

_(But you are forgetting one thing, darling: there is always the spider, the predator, and his lunch, the fly, who dances on this web. And what do you think, __**which one are you?**__)_

"Very well," Orochimaru had successfully turned the conversation to his advantage, "I accept your proposition." (_but under __**his**__ terms, of course_) "You will remain as my guest and regularly report your visions" (_the way he said the word sounded too laughable_) "while I agree to spare your (_**pathetic**_) lives with no ill resulting to the younger girl." His eyes gleamed with the most bizarre humour, while his voice dripped with condescension, "Do both sides agree?"

As if she had a _**choice**_! _This is just a game for him_, Akane realized. A sick and twisted game she couldn't evade, for the sake of the prize- keeping their lives. In her morbid imagination, she could almost picture Orochimaru applauding and cheering at her misery. _At least **someone** is having fun..._

The eighteen-year old was too, too exhausted to keep track of her own thoughts anymore, but she knew her role was not yet quite finished.

(_A role is the most proper word, because this is a theater, and you are the sole actress, and your audience is enjoying the show_ **_way too much_**_. Your every gesture, every line and face has to engross it. The loss of its attention might turn out rather dreadful…_)

Akane knew that while Orochimaru admired defiance, disrespect was not something he found tolerable. So she clenched her teeth until she heard the sound of calcium cracking, steeling herself. And if she once thought her pride couldn't be stepped on more harshly, she thoroughly disagreed now, as she honored the criminal with a slight bow, affirming, "Yes, I would be very pleased to work for you… Orochimaru-_san_."

The words nearly tore her throat to shreds as they emerged, but they came out, furiously humiliating, all the same.

"How dare you address Orochimaru-sama like that!" Kabuto spoke up then, taking insult to the honorific Akane used.

This was not pointless. The long-haired girl saw it as a small leeway to her rebellious nature- she _refused _to add the expected superior _–sama_ to the Sannin's name. Even though she was not allowed to state her genuine opinion considering the situation, the –san honorific she put spoke plenty- while it was respectful, it was so in a way two strangers regard each other. Respect only out of politeness and nothing more.

Even if under his control, even if he killed her, Akane decided she would not lower herself by addressing him in a way his other puppets did.

Orochimaru was as intelligent as remembered him from the series, because he instantly understood the underlayer of her words. But it was not rage he directed at her- his only reaction was a canine-sharp smile. Somehow, it made her more fearful than if he had shouted out at her.

"Well, isn't this just adorable," Orochimaru cooed, "It's quite alright, Kabutot. We should get along marvelously, ne, Akane-_chan_?"

She dug her short nails into her palms, forming deep pink crescents. H-He was mocking her with the way he threw that disgusting word of endearment after her name!

Something shifted in the darkness in the back of the room, turning their attention. Two red eyes briefly flashed and Akane watched Orochimaru's face instantly twist into a knowing smirk. "Leaving to train already, Sasuke-kun?" he called out silkily, "Wouldn't you like to introduce yourself to our new… _guests_?"

The shadow of a boy stopped at the door, his appearance only partially revealed by the light of the candles: a white-half kimono and a purple sash. Akane could recognize it as the outfit from the show, but instead of feeling any sort of content for being in a presence of a Konoha ninja, all she could feel was a huge dislike, dangerously bordering on hate.

The stupid Uchiha had just been **standing** there the whole time while they were in desperate need of **help**! How could he turn deaf-ear to it all? The screams, the tears,_ the humiliation_? Did he ignore things like this on a regular basis?

"I have nothing to say to them. If they're lucky, they'll die soon," the shadow spoke in a smooth tone then, rid of any emotion or opinion, like he was merely stating a fact.

This had the long-haired girl completely out of her mind with anger. Akane forced herself to reply in an even tone, "...and such a _pleasurable experience_ like meeting you will never be forgotten, Uchiha-san."

The door opened, bathing him in a flash of brighter candlelight for a second, and then quickly closed behind him. It could have been just her ears deceiving her, but she thought she heard a faint "Hn" from him and almost burst out laughing then and there: Sasuke was the same as she remembered him! Akane controlled these impulses though, not only because it would be inappropriate for the dangerous situation she was in, but also because she wasn't sure her lungs could support even a small cough.

From the corner of her vision, she could swear she saw Orochimaru smirk and wondered what the hidden joke was this time.

"Kabuto, show Akane-chan to her new room," the Sound leader turned to his right-hand man then, indicating that his audience with her had ended. With this said, he started to walk towards the back exit of the chamber. "Be sure to take care of all of our _guest's_ needs. I will hear more of her," a short, airy laugh, "_predictions_ in the morning."

A noise of commotion had Akane's hearbeat increasing and attention switched back from the Sannin.

"H-Hey! What are you doing?" Hana finally found her voice when the two ninja made a grab for her hands in what looked like a non-too-gentle manner.

"Wait, what's happening? Where are they taking her?" Akane tensed in alarm, an ugly suspicion sinking its claws into her mind.

"Back to the cell, of course," Kabuto raised a hand and waved it idly in the air in response. Akane glared at the Sannin's retreating back, enraged, and opened her mouth to call after him, but Kabuto intersected her.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you… After all, I _assure_ you that, as promised, no harm will come to the girl where she will be taking residence." "We don't have any other prisoners in this base at the moment, you see, so it _should_ be alright," he finished matter-of-factly, like that in itself explained why they were being separated.

By the time Akane looked back at the door at the other end of the chamber, Orochimaru was already gone.

"And how will I know if you're being considerate of your part of the deal?" her question came through a quick hiss. The medic just shrugged his shoulders noncommittally, infuriating her further.

"You will see her in the morning, of course," he yawned, causing his glasses to slip a bit from the bridge of his nose, "It** is** very late and I'm eager to rest myself, so do you mind?"

Akane felt like pointing out the fact that, yes, she _did_ mind, she did mind a lot, and she wouldn't know what part of the day it was for she _hadn't seen sunlight in weeks_, but barely contained herself. She opted for using a few moments to try to talk to Hana. This, however, proved not to be possible, as Kabuto motioned for her to follow him ("Are you coming already?") and Hana ("Get your slimy hands off of me!") was preoccupied with swearing at the Sound shinobi.

"It's ok, Hana! I'll see you in the morning, alright?" she managed to call out to the other girl, sounding far more collected than she felt at the moment. Hana's eyes met her own across the room, and Akane tried to smile for her.

_(It's not ok. It's damn right __**not ok**__, and you are __**crazy**__ for trying to convince her so.)_

The yukata-dressed girl gave a shaky nod and then disappeared from her eyesight when the guards pushed her through the double-door. Feeling more than slightly ill, Akane followed Kabuto out soon after.

* * *

The stone walls were making her feel claustrophobic as Kabuto led her down the candle-lit hall. He seemed to be intent on having a quiet, question-free stroll down the hallways but, unfortunately, Akane was panic-stricken enough to ignore his unspoken order.

"What happened to Ken?"

The white-haired man gave her an annoyed look over his shoulder.

"To who?"

"The bartender," she persisted, "from Futari. What did you do to him? You didn't… You didn't kil—"

"There was no need for that," he explained in a tone that implied a motion of rolling one's eyes, "That would have brought a _real investigation_ to that dirty town." He shook his head, "No, the old geezer is still alive… A small alternation jutsu and his memory is as good as new."

As if anticipating her next question, he continued in a bored voice, "He _does_ remember you and Hana, but has no exact memory of when you left. So I presume he'll come to the popular conclusion that you left on your own accord, don't you agree?"

Clever.

Wickedly, rottenly clever. There was no one apart from them in the bar that night, so the truth was masterfully concealed. No one would ever know what had happened. Which meant that they couldn't expect any help from the outside.

Which meant it was all up to her to get them out of here.

She was all alone in this.

Akane shuddered in herself.

Such a sickening feeling.

Shortly after their short exchange, Kabuto stopped in front of a wooden door and produced a key out of his pocket. Without a word, he unlocked the room and held open the door, in a parody of the well-mannered gentleman he had presented himself when they first met. Akane ignored this sting of mockery and entered, the medic following closely behind.

"This is where you'll be staying," he introduced in a well-exercised tone as he lit a single candle on a night table, "I assume you are accustomed to lack of luxury, yes?"

Once again she chose to ignore this little jab at her position. She was far too tired to play any more games with these… these… people.

(_But you wouldn't really call them __**people**__, now would you? It's only your wasteful sense of morality that's keeping you from voicing out what you truly think they are…_)

"The bathroom is in the back," Kabuto continued, ignoring her silence, obviously not even expecting an answer, "And there's a box of matches in the drawer." He made his way to exit the room, "Also, the door will be locked. I am sure you understand why. I will see you in the morning."

The girl grew pale at the thought of spending the night in this room. As if reading her mind, Kabuto looked and smirked at her.

"Sweet dreams, Akane-san."

the door closed. Lock snapped. Steps grew fainter. And then…

There was nothing but complete silence.

Akane let out a shaky breath she hadn't even known she was holding.

_Breathe in… Breathe out…_

As the adrenaline left her body, pain returned to her hands, shoulders, knees, abdomen… along with a whole lot of thoughts she would've very much liked to dispose of.

_I have just made a deal with one of the main antagonists in Narutoverse._

Akane couldn't decide if this was a terrifying or a happy circumstance. **Terrifying** because she had just gotten herself bound to an S-ranked criminal; she had just entered a dance with the devil, even though she didn't quite know the steps, and didn't quite know the tune. Indescribably **happy**, however, because, hell, they were still alive and unharmed!… at least for the moment.

Of course that she had her doubts about the whole deal- but it had been _her_ idea, not Orochimaru's. What disturbed Akane, though, was that he was so happily ready to accept it. Had she planted a seed of doubt in him when she revealed an intimate part of his childhood, the one which no one, not even Kabuto, knew or could possibly know about? Or was it the horrified expression she'd worn when Hana had declared her 'a prophetess' that had convinced him that Hana was telling the 'truth'? Or was it her risky endeavor that amused him and thus prolonged her existence? Was it all of this combined? _Why_ had he let them live?

And what, oh God, what was going happen now? What would she tell him in the morning? She couldn't _really_ tell him any useful information. She was certain he would use it for something terrible. Just like she said to Hana, she couldn't let herself be responsible for the lives of innocent.

But maybe…

Maybe this was all a test. Yes, that's what it was. He _didn't _believe her. Orochimaru was far too buried in his scientific research to acknowledge something as incredulous as the supernatural and vague. But she had left him doubtful when she provided him a small proof of her claims, and he wasn't going to let it slip away.

So. All that was expected of her, for the moment, was to prove her 'truthfulness'. All she had to do was tell them a few things from the past that they thought no one could possibly know. All she had to do was buy herself some time and find a way out of here.

A way to escape.

The eighteen-year-old girl climbed onto the bed and buried her face into the rough material of a pillow. The damp smell of earth filled her mouth. All the tension from previous events finally crashed down on her and Akane felt like screaming in frustration. She was in pain, she was exhausted, scared, worried beyond her mind, and so she collapsed into the darkness. Until that very last second of consciousness her body couldn't seem to figure out if she had just fallen asleep or had passed out.

The more probable, anyway, was the latter.

_(You have just given him the proper tool which he only needs to sharpen all the time. That is… Until it becomes expendable and the time comes for it to be **disposed of**…)_

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**Translation: Scientia potestas est: Knowledge is power.**

***Geta- Japanese footwear**

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**A/N: Please do leave a review. :3 Just to clear this out for the future, I don't reply to the reviews similar to "Good chapter" and "Plz update soon!" the main reason being- well, ****there's not much I can reply yo that really****... But thank you nevertheless. **

**So if you're going to review, at least share your opinion with me; what character/scene/sentence you liked/disliked the most and why? Just a few words is all it takes and, some of you being authors yourselves, you know how great it feels when you know what it is that your readers like the most about your story, and were you can work to improve yourself. Reviews = love & motivation. ^.^**


	14. Ignis aurum probat

**Chapter fourteen:**

**Ignis aurum probat**

**A/N: It's been awhile since I've written a short and not-so-suspenseful suspenseful chapter… Hah, I've spoiled you too much. xD Not really, just can't seem to find enough time to write. Hence this chapter is pretty lame. You've been warned. Also, READ THE A/N after the chapter! It's important!  
**

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She didn't dream anything that night. This was, in fact, a very weird event for her.

She** always** dreamed, and her imagination was always very creative at that. They were usually very vivid, colorful, like being played out in a movie, and she found the lack of them fairly disturbing. It was like this place didn't _allow_ anybody to keep even their dreams, metaphorically or not. This left her feeling unnervingly _bare_.

CLICK!

A sound of clanging metal, quickly followed by a short knock.

She peaked beneath her stuck eyelids in the moment that a young white-haired man entered the dark room. Instantly, Akane's whole body tensed in alarm. She sprang up to the sitting position, reflexively kicking the sheets to the bottom of the bed. Her heartbeat didn't slow down upon seeing the mildly confused Kabuto in front of her, but she slowly relaxed upon inspecting the object he was carrying in his hands.

Something that looked suspiciously like breakfast.

"Jumpy, aren't we?" the wry, meaningful smirk hovering at the corners of his mouth immediately caught her eye and somewhere in the not-yet-fully-awake part of her being the eighteen-year-old was slightly ashamed of acting so skittish. Even though, anyone would agree, she had every right to do so. Her rib-cage had yet to recover from its previous introduction to Kabuto's leg…

"Good morning, Akane-san," he smiled to her, almost pleasantly, all the traces of his previous smirk vanishing in a blink of an eye. For a moment, Akane questioned herself if it was really there in the first place.

_Do I really have to say good morning to an abductor?_ The rebellious part of her brain sniffed indignantly. However, just like the physical functions of her body, her mind came to its senses, and the mask of politeness, so practiced over these two years, automatically clicked into its rightful place.

"Good morning, Kabuto-san."

She felt like rewarding herself a cookie for her discipline.

_But is it really morning?_ she puzzled. There were no windows in the room and it stayed equally dark be it day or night, only illuminated by that single candle on the table. There weren't any clocks either. The whole ordeal made her feel ridiculously disoriented.

She was snapped out of her musings by a sound of soft measured steps, approaching.

The medic was closing the distance between the sleeping furniture and the door and, considering the room's size, Akane decided to stay _very still_ and sit on the bed. She unintentionally gripped the bedding tighter when he came towards her, but his only action was to put the tray of food on the small night table beside the bed. Not lingering there for more than necessary, he retreated to his previous position by the door, and then leaned onto the frame in a nonchalant manner, patiently observing her.

Akane turned to inspect the content of the plate she was brought. Bread, cheese and a meat of sorts. She felt her mouth water instantly. It's been ages since she ate a decent meal! Still, she just sat there, eyeballing the said tray and having to intention to pick it up.

"It isn't poisoned, if that's what you're wondering."

The girl raised her look to stare at the medic.

"I know it isn't," she replied calmly, but making no move to touch the plate. Why would they poison her anyway? She wasn't dumb. If they wished to kill her, they could have very well done so yesterday.

"Did Hana get her breakfast? I want to see her."

Kabuto's expression remained completely impassive as he shook his head, white tresses of hair concealing his eyes. He smiled, waving her question off:

"First thing's first. Need I remind you of your part of the deal?"

Akane bit her tongue. She didn't have any plan about what she was going to say when the time came. She thought she would have at least a few minutes to think up an appropriate answer. The medic watched the shift in her facial expressions, no doubt analyzing her every unconscious move. This revelation made her shift uncomfortably in her spot.

Quickly deciding her mind, she picked her words carefully, rolling them around in her head and then slowly off of her tongue.

"I dreamed of some sort of a castle, circled by stone walls," she spoke, intentionally letting her voice waver a bit. If she was supposed to play a soothsayer, she knew she shouldn't sound too sure of herself and her supposed knowledge… She took a long breath before continuing:

"There was a blond woman, beautiful and very temperamental looking, who was speaking with Orochimaru-san."

The medic's eyes narrowed at her usage of the suffix, but she continued, seemingly ignorant of this fact. "There was also a young woman with short black hair behind the first one. I'm… almost sure the blonde was addressed as 'Tsu-na-de'."

She made a small pause, warily picking her words and assembling her chaotic thoughts, "It looked like Orochimaru-san was in great pain: he had a fever and his arms were bandaged." "He didn't look too concerned though. He was sure that Tsunade…" she stopped there, mimicking a shocked realization, before twisting her face into a contemplating one, "…Wait… Isn't that the Fifth Hokage's name?"

Kabuto was still watching her, as nonchalant as ever. The only thing out of the place was a small frown forming between his colorless eyebrows.

"Maybe," he evaded the question after a small thinking pause. Not very discreetly, he brought her back to the previous topic, "Orochimaru-sama was sure that- what?"

Akane sighed. _So far, so good._ She never meant for her question to be answered, because it served a different purpose. She had to somehow convince him to believe that she was very down-to-earth and would be otherwise oblivious if it were not for her 'gift'.

"He was sure that this Tsunade will agree to his offer. Something about her being the only medic who could heal his arms…" she shook her head, like she was desperately trying not to believe in what she saw. "But, I heard that **the Hokage** is the best medic in the world! It can't be possible that the Hokage is personally interacting with--"

"Orochimaru-sama is a man of great power," the medic-nin commented, voice suspiciously flat. Akane felt like spitting a _Well, no shit Sherlock! _comment at him, but grit her teeth instead. He obviously couldn't care less about her opinion, and Akane needed to test how far she could go with her little charade.

"… So you mean this really happened?!" she asked with the most incredulous look she could conjure, "The **Hokage** healed his hands and he really brought her brother and her lover **back** **from the dead**? That's just impossible!"

"What else did you see?" demanded Kabuto more sternly this time. _He's impatient,_ Akane cheered inwardly. _Does this mean he believes me?_

Outwardly, she slumped helplessly into her pillow. She made sure to blink a few times in disbelief, just for the show. The long-haired girl was silent a few moments, thinking about how much she should tell him. It **was** possible that in the future he would always expect of her to have such lengthy visions, so she decided to cut it short.

"Also, Tsunade is afraid of blood. And because she couldn't answer him in that moment, Orochimaru-san gave her some time to think about it. That's all I saw."

Without another word, the white-haired man turned and grasped the door-knob. Before the stupefied girl could even protest against his action, the medic was out of the room.

"I'll come to take you to Hana as soon as I'm available," he told her through the door. The lock clicked, "I apologize for the inconvenience, Akane-san."

"Hey! Wait a minute!" she was immediately on her feet and running to the door. She grasped the knob and pulled. Nothing. Giving it another few strong yanks, the girl kicked it with all the strength she could muster. The bloody bastard was gone! Oh she was gonna rip his throat out and kill him when he came back! She was gonna—

_What in the world am I thinking?! _She was horrified with herself! The girl stopped in her assault on the door and forced herself to relax.

_Breathe in… Breathe out… Slowly…_

_I must stop acting so stupidly, _she scolded herself for her previous aggressive trail of thoughts, _I will gain absolutely nothing if I let my emotions get the better of me._

But Akane _was_ angry. She was so incredibly angry at everybody and everything. But mostly, she was just angry at _herself_. Because inside, she knew she was crumbling. Just knowing she was under someone's complete control drove her absolutely _mad._

The so-called-soothsayer sat on the bed and inhaled deeply. Air. She needed air. She needed to cool down and think.

_Breathe in… Breathe out… Calm down…_

She vaguely wondered **why** she reacted in the way she had. Sure, he had locked her in a room, but she was given breakfast_ and_ he said he would come back as soon as he finished whatever crap he was been doing. So why did she—

_(Because you've just been locked up like __**an animal**__. A bird. Isn't that what the Snake called you?)_

**No,** she just didn't like her restricted freedom. Kabuto would come back, she was sure of it. She mentally put herself in his shoes, imagining his point of view. He was probably confused as hell since he didn't know what to make of her detailed and correct vision. Yes, he had most surely gone straight to _his precious Orochimaru-sama_ to report it. Probably so they could discuss if the 'vision' was truthful, and if not, to cut their deal short.

In fact, this was going great!

Yes, it was definitely going great. Because the vision really **was** truthful, he was starting to believe her and he said he would come back to take her to see Hana. Good. This was all going very good.

_(Then why weren't you taken to tell your prediction to Orochimaru directly? Why did you only speak with Kabuto if the Sannin is so interested in your ability? Don't you see? They don't and __**will never**__ trust you. You will stayed locked up in this room till—)_

_Kabuto __**will **__come back. I __**will**__ gain their trust. Period._

Akane shook her head to quiet down the disturbing thoughts that plagued her head. She needed to think positive. Drowning in self pity would get her nowhere. Sure, she didn't trust the Sound-nin, but it** was **in their best interests to cooperate with her. Especially now that she had given them another accurate 'vision'.

Unhesitant, she took a bite of the food Kabuto brought her. It didn't taste bad. In fact, it was nice and decent… until she ate it all in a few bites.

Pushing the now-empty tray aside, she started to pace the little room she was introduced to yesterday. It was spacious enough to make five steps from the door to the bed, and with faint disdain, Akane thought how even her prison cell had been more of a challenge to her feet. Logically enough, the Sound surely had more prisoners than willing guests…

The bed was placed along the opposite wall of the door, covered with a rough grey blanket whose smell she only faintly remembered from last night. In fact, she noticed she was used to most odors now. It didn't **stink**, but the air was heavily scented and felt like a physical weight on her lungs.

(_Think about how many __**other **__adjustments you will have to make- because you will__** never**__ leave this place_)

She scrutinized the small night table on the left side of her bed, on which was laid a metal tray and a white half-burnt candle, easily the most colorful object in the room. The colorless wallpaper was peeling away, revealing the thick wooden construction that supported the stone beneath. This made her conclude that the base was carved out in a cave, or buried deep in some mountain. She dismissed the thought when she realized that those circumstances were only going to make her escape more improbable.

All in all, the whole room was too plain and too ordinary, just like the girl that now took residence in its walls.

Next, Akane entered the bathroom, not surprised at all when she found out that it only consisted of a toilet, a sink and a shower with no curtains or sponge. There was no mirror, but then again, the eighteen-year-old was sure that she **didn't** really want to see her own reflection. Her skin itched. Suddenly feeling very self-conscious, she debated the idea of taking a quick shower and scrubbing the dirt with her own nails, but decided against it. It would be useless since she would have to put on her filthy clothes again. Also, she didn't want to risk the chance of Kabuto returning and entering the bathroom…

Because he **was** going to return. Absolutely. He was probably on his way right now, actually.

The girl leaned down to the sink and drank some water, more so, so she could moisten her dry throat than she was really thirsty. She washed her face and whatever piece of skin she could get to without taking her clothes off. Then she returned to her new room.

She sat on the bed, kicking her feet weakly into the air.

_How much time had gone by since Kabuto left the room?_

She picked up some leftover bread crumbs and licked them off of her fingers.

_Fifteen minutes? An hour?_

Breathed really, _really_ deep.

_**How much longer?!**_

No sooner had this question crossed her mind, than the sound of footsteps echoed from the hallway.

_Well, speak of the devil,_ Akane thought with her stomach making a back-flip in a barely contained squeal of joy.

A noisy jingle of keys and a masked face—_not the one she had been expecting_—showed itself at the door.

A Sound-nin.

"Hope I didn't make you wait too long, brat," the man cocked his head to the side as if to apologize (_a mockery_), but she found herself quickly hopping to her feet nevertheless.

"Eager to see the other bitch?"

Akane clenched her teeth in silent frustration. There was unfortunately no way she could tell him to **go to hell** without sounding too offensive. Wordlessly, she slipped out of the room into the hallway.

The Sound ninja began stomping down the dimly-lit halls, obviously expecting her to follow suit. So she did.

"Did Kabuto-san send you to escort me?"

A snort. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Busy."

"…Oh."

She kept quiet a few moments, organizing her thoughts. _No matter, at least Kabuto sent someone else to take me to her. So he spoke the truth after all…_

_(He couldn't even bother to take you personally, huh? –_a short ironical laugh_- Oh, they must find you __**very**__ significant when they act this way, don't you think so?)_

"Could you tell me what time it is?"

"What's with all the nosy questions? Can't you just be quiet?"

"… Please?"

"10 AM. Now shuddup," the gray-uniformed man strained through his teeth and Akane chose not to pressure the subject further. Kabuto had been honest once more- it seemed as if it really was morning. It looked like the man was above petty lies. _Deception _was apparently his preferable forte… She needn't have bothered to be quiet for long though, as they entered the well known dungeon a few corners away.

A cold, disgusting smell of mold washed over the eighteen-year old as she sank down the stairs. The familiar feeling of dread settled in a fine layer in her stomach and the girl shivered from head to toe. When they were down, the ninja leaned onto the wall some distance away and she all but ran to her ex-cell.

"Hana!"

A small dirty bundle flinched at her call, and Akane watched with a mixture of relief and worry as the younger girl rose to her feet. After a long-lived moment of stupor, she neared the bars and recognized her senior friend.

"Akane! You're ok!" the fifteen-year-old's voice was as high-pitched as ever and she fully went into what Akane called 'her ranting mode'. "Oh my God, I was so scared they did something to you! They just threw me back in here after the creepy snake-guy left, and they didn't want to answer any of my questions, so I came to all sorts of scary conclusions—that maybe they locked you up, and tortured you, or maybe even—"

"They didn't do anything to me, Hana," she spoke calmly, a soft note warming up her tone, before turning serious, "Did they do anything to you? Are you hurt?"

The smaller girl shook her head no.

"Did you get anything to eat and drink?"

This time, her face twisted into a disgusted grimace.

"Yeah, I sure did. That icky grey rice… yet again. Seriously, you could have at least **specified **what **kind **of food when you made the deal with that… that… Akane, are you alright?" she asked upon noticing the change in the said girl's face. Her lips were parted and her eyes widened just the tiniest bit in some emotion akin to sudden horror upon her realization.

_(You didn't __**specify**__ anything. Fool! And, as you see, he will use this to his full advantage… An interesting game this is, isn't it, Akane- chan? )_

"_But for that, I need to keep you alive __**for a period of time**__, now don't I?" (__**How**__ long?)_

_(You should have known: An alliance is only useful as a camouflage to make the enemy relax his guard.)_

"…_I agree to spare your lives, with no ill resulting __**to the younger girl**_**.**_**" **__(__**You**__ on the other hand…)_

"_Do both sides agree?"_

Quickly smoothing her features, as to cover up the tracks of her previous trail of thoughts, Akane brought her look back up to the girl.

"What?"

Hana shifted awkwardly "I asked if you were alright?"

The older girl looked like she was actually contemplating the simple question. Then her face split into a wide smile, an emotionless action meant only for comfort.

"I feel," (_such a__** lie**_) "fine."

Luckily, Hana was bad at reading her companion's thoughts the same she was in organizing her own.

"Oh… that's good then," she exhaled a sigh of relief.

Silence fell between the two girls, thick, dark, and heavily depressing. Hana chewed on her bottom lip (_like she always did when she's __**scared out of her skin**_) and blurted out the question she obviously gave much thought about.

"Akane? H-How come you're so… collected? How is it that you're, even now, so calm, so b-brave, so fearle—"

"I'm not!" the dark-haired girl stopped her, harshly, but too ashamed to let her finish her own thought, "I'm not…"

She closed her eyes. _Take a deep breath_. And for the first time, feeling utterly disgusted, she admitted a cruel fact she usually hid even from herself.

"I am **terrified**. But maybe that's a good thing. When you're scared, you become more cautious…" she trailed of, evading looking Hana in the eyes. It was in that moment that she made another promise to herself: she would never voice this… this… _weakness_ again. **Ever**.

"What are we going t-to do now?" there was a distant echo of a sob in Hana's inquiry. "T-That guy is--… he… he is **mad**, isn't he? He's some sort of a master psycho-criminal," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "in the _Naruto_ series, isn't he?"

"Brat, no conspiracy plotting there!" the Sound ninja growled when he picked up the low tone of the girl's voice. In a flash, he made his way to Akane and grabbed her wrist, "That's it, your time is up. Let's go."

"Wait! I just have to say one more thing to her!" ignoring her plea, the guard pulled her to her feet. "Hana, don't worry! It's ok! Think: where is the safest place to hide yourself in a jungle?" she called to the younger girl, before he started taking her out of the dungeon. Hana looked at her, befuddlement painting itself across her features at the quizzical question.

A sad smile pulled at the corner's of Akane's lips.

"On the back of the lion _(the most dangerous predator)_ himself."

(_You ought to be careful, child; for the lion can always turn around and notice- a prey like you __**is oh-so-easy**__ to break and __**devour**__… _)

**

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Translation: Ignis aurum probat- Fire tests gold (A phrase referring to the refining of character through difficult circumstances)**

_**IMPORTANT**__**A/N!!!!!**_** As you know, this chapter is the first day of Akane's time in Sound. And since she's being captive there, it's only reasonable that she will interact with some well-known characters. Hence, I will be describing some ****one-shots/drabbles/scenes ****involving Akane and ****Orochimaru, Kabuto and Sasuke.**

**The question is: Which character do YOU want to read about the most?**

**What does this mean? It means that the character you pick will appear ****MORE FREQUENTLY**** in the chapters than the other two. This does ****NOT**** mean that these scenes are going to be romantic (keep in mind that I don't really like these characters), quite the contrary. Expect ****suspense, mind-f*ckery**** (pardon my language****) and witty conversations****.**

**This being said, please go to ****my profile**** and ****VOTE ON THE POLL!**

**Don't forget to leave a review. ;-)**


	15. Modus vivendi

**Chapter fifteen:**

**Modus vivendi**

**A/N: I've got some bad news. As you probably noticed, I haven't updated in quite a while. The thing is, I rarely have time to write and even if I do write it down, I'm afraid that I'm a perfectionist so I like to take extra time when writing. Which means that I won't update as regularly as before. So please, enjoy this chapter and keep looking forward to the next one. It might be updates the next week, and then again, it might not. Hope you all understand.**

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"So you're saying that the red-haired boy… was possessed by_ a demon_?"

"Yes. I… I know this sounds _impossible_ but that boy, Gaara was his name, had some kind of a _power_ sealed within him. He-- _It_ turned hungry for blood on the nights of the full moon and I guess that the Sound ninja was just the randomly picked victim."

A small dubious pause.

"The bandaged man _did_ say that he was going to attack him- he mentioned being the contestant of some test, exam or whatever, so that also might be the reason—"

"I see."

Akane sat, unmoving, looking at her folded arms in her lap as to avoid Kabuto's most indiscreet stare from across the room. She expected him to turn and leave, just like he did the day before, so the Sound guard could take her to see Hana in the dungeon. This morning, however, he stayed perfectly in place by the door, inspecting her in a way she didn't find all too comfortable.

_Did she say something wrong?_ No, that couldn't be the case. Unlike the first time she confronted him with her 'vision', Akane spent the entire yesterday afternoon choosing the most proper information she could present to him today.

The criteria she set for her future 'visions' was this: it had to be a piece of information that only Kabuto or Orochimaru _already __knew_ for certain, as to gain their trust about her supposed 'gift'. **But.** The information couldn't be _directly_ connected to them, as in, they couldn't be the _participants_ of the described scene. She needed to avoid any and all suspicion they might harbor towards her, and saying only the facts that related strictly and personally to them would get her right on that unpleasant suicide road.

The second criterion was by far simpler: she needed to avoid saying anything that the Snake Sannin could _actually use_ in any way. Explanations unneeded. However, the information needed to _sound _intriguing enough, for she still needed to _appear_ usefulto them.

Confusing as it sounded, and as much of a headache Akane got from thinking about it too long; the system had worked thus far. The girl didn't mind the convolution much, though. Thinking was, after all, the only entertaining action she could do really when locked up in the claustrophobic, dark room for the entire afternoon and night.

When the medic spoke again, Akane was on the edge of her seat, hands fisted in the sheets by her sides and toes curled anxiously.

"We'll be starting the tests this afternoon," he informed and the girl suddenly imagined the most disturbing picture of herself with a long tail and skinny claws: a lab rat. She felt a momentary twist of disgust that must have flashed across her face, because the medic only sighed, titling his head to the side in a charming, lighthearted manner.

"Don't worry, Akane-san," he raised his hands in front of him, palms-up, in a gesture that was supposed to assure her of no foul-play, "I only need to conduct a few minor tests and take some blood-examples before we move. I promise it will not hurt."

The look on his face as he spoke seemed somehow menacing and cordial at the same time, but Akane wasn't sure how that was even possible. Maybe it was an illusion meant to throw her off, or maybe just a trick of the candle light. Whatever it was, it made her fearful of what surprises this man had in store for her. Dispassionately, she nodded her head.

_Like I'd let you hurt me._

When the medic finally turned around and grasped the doorknob, the eighteen-year old breathed out an air of relief. Only when she heard the faint _click_ of the lock did she actually dare to move and reach out for her breakfast on the small table.

The so-called-soothsayer absently chewed on the impromptu sandwich, occasionally casting quick, suspicious looks at the small bundle beside the tray. Kabuto had brought her clothes and various other thingamabobs that morning. Even though Akane was certain that the man didn't do it out of a good of his heart (more like to get her squeaky clean before they entered the lab), she was strangely grateful nonetheless. She leaned over the bed and put the small package in her lap, carefully picking the clothing up.

For a moment the girl was struck with the thought that he expected her to wear a pillowcase. Then she noticed long sleeves and traced a finger along the pale collar line. _A kimono,_ she realized. A very, very cheap kimono. It was small, washed out and gray from bleach. It might have once been purple, she concluded from the faint purplish stain-like blotches at the edges. _It's clean and that's all that matters. _Besides, it was better than the rough brown apron she'd been wearing for the past year. Akane scrutinized the clothing again.

Damn. It still looked like a pillowcase.

Sighing, she put the kimono aside and dug into the small bag that came with the clothes. Picking through its content, she couldn't help but smile with all her teeth. A razor! A sponge! Soap and shampoo! Akane suppressed a squeal and tried to ignore that small wicked voice that repeatedly called her ridiculous. The girl was grinning like an idiot when she found clean underwear and pads, too excited to feel even the slightest shy. She scanned over her new possessions once again and assembled them on the table almost greedily.

_Hygiene, how I love thee!_

* * *

"And you got clothes, too?!" the dark-haired girl asked incredulously, which made Akane nod and lower her head in shame. The yukata was sticking to Hana's body, wet and filthy from the grime and dampness of the cell and Akane felt treacherous in her clean, pleasantly-scented kimono (it didn't look like a pillowcase anymore). Hana bit her already bloodied lip and shook her head, a black curtain of greasy hair hanging heavily on the sides of the girl's face.

"T-That's not fair!" she squealed and Akane flinched at the accusing tone rippling through her words, "What about me, huh? I've spent the whole two stupid nights sleeping on a pile of rocks and dirt, while- while- …I bet you even got a bed!"

The older girl kept silent.

"Oh, you did?!" Hana continued, an almost nasty tone creeping its way into her voice. "And I bet that I'm supposed to be a modest little prisoner and eat this disgusting rice till I _freaking die here_!"

"You won't die," Akane murmured quietly, "I won't let us die." She leaned in more to the bars, using the moment of guard's inattention, "I'll find a way out, Hana. I promise. I… I have a few ideas but--"

"Ya know what? I really don't care," said Hana, not bothering to lower her voice, "Just get us out of here, ok?"

Akane met her eyes, red and watery, and had to ignore a sharp stab of guilt in her chest. Hana had been crying again.

"Till then you could always get me some common life necessities," the younger girl continued, irritated by Akane's inspecting stare as much as by her lack of response, "Just get me what you got. Hell, I'll even settle for a futon."

Akane thought for a second.

"Alright, I'll ask Kabuto when I see him today…" She chose not to tell the girl about the tests scheduled for that afternoon. Hana nodded half-heartedly and Akane was disturbed by how such a young person could look so breakable and so tired... and so… so…

(_Sick and withering. But you would never tell her that. All because you are afraid that you might look the same._)

Trying her best not to look at her small friend, Akane hurried out of the dungeon, one sole, stubborn thought digging its claws in the soft walls of her mind.

_I won't let us die here._

* * *

The clinical smell of chemicals for preservation was nauseating. Akane held her breath as she followed Kabuto into the unfamiliar room, her eyes darting curiously and somewhat anxiously upon entering. The room was wide, clean and, as much as Akane wanted to blame it for her shivering, it was contrarily warm and ordinary. The walls were not covered in specks of blood as she expected them to be, but in simple gray ceramic tiles. The lighting was not a bright sickening yellow of electric bulbs, but the room was illuminated by the soft orange of the candles and a faint green glow of various containers carefully organized on the shelves. All in all, it looked like a completely normal surgery, minus the electricity. Akane didn't like hospitals, she really didn't. But this was nothing to be afraid of, right?

"If you would come here, Akane-san…?"

The girl was snapped from her gaze by the medic's low call and her eyes followed him when he sat himself comfortably at the chair beside the desk. He reached out for a few carefully arranged instruments and Akane flinched when she realized this.

Her dislike of the room wasn't really what bothered her, and neither was it the sterile instruments that lay so obediently beneath Kabuto's hands, but it was the creeping feeling that the medic looked so _right_ there. What bothered her was the fact that he seemed to perfectly _fit_ in with the ambient of the room; of a room that no doubt had witnessed some of the most _inhumane_ and _monstrous_ activities known. She felt bile rise in her throat.

And yet…

Had she met Kabuto like this, calm and motionless, bathed in the soft, golden glow of dying and flickering candles, she would have _never _deemed him capable of murder.

It was a strangely unsettling thought.

The illusion of innocence, however, broke the very second he opened his eyes--because they were the ones she had seen two days before, his foot on her dirty palm, as he was staring down at her, expression cold and uncaring.

Hushing down the choir of whispering thoughts, she neared the sitting white-haired man with as much as grace as she could muster up. Kabuto's eyes revealed nothing but glittering amusement. With a lazy flick of his wrist he motioned for her to sit on a wooden chair across from him. The moment she did so, his hand shot out and Akane almost jumped in her seat.

"I'm just going to take some of your blood," he said soothingly while his fingers clenched around her elbow. Akane grit her teeth, trying to drown the sudden urge to jerk away from his tight and surprisingly cold grasp. She took a deep breath and stayed put instead, cautiously watching as he wrapped a string of cloth around her upper arm in quick, practiced manner.

"Tell me, Akane-san," the medic-nin started conversationally and produced a small glass container with a needle for collecting blood, "How are you enjoying your stay? If there's anything you find yourself lacking, you should tell me so I could provide it to you--" He noticed her warily eyeing the needle, and smiled. She met his laughing eyes evenly, with enough ice to freeze a lake, and yet his expression remained unchanged.

"You are not afraid of needles, are you?" he queried innocently.

Obviously, her glare hadn't been enough to wipe that infuriating smirk off his face. She could feel her emotions fighting to display themselves on her features and she was struggling to keep her mask of apathy intact.

"I'm not," she lied, "And as for your first _kind_ question, I must say that I'm not pleased with how you've been treating Hana. She is--"

"Not my concern," Kabuto finished for her as he twirled the instrument idly in his hand, waiting. Akane was just going to rebel against his words when he stopped her, shaking his head sympathetically, "You must understand that she's not under my authority anymore, but Orochimaru-sama's." There was a remnant of a smirk lingering on his lips, or maybe it was pity, or even more possibly, only a dance of the shadows. Whatever it was Akane couldn't really tell, because his face was positioned in such an angle that it was masked by clammy darkness.

"You could, of course, take your request to him personally. But right now, we need to get started," he suggested and casually shrugged his shoulders. The glass instrument neared her arm and Akane could feel Kabuto's cool fingers more clearly than ever on her skin. "Stay still," he instructed, "You don't want me to miss the vein."

Oh, and she didn't. She froze. As discretely as she could, she inhaled as much air as her lungs could support and turned her look away when she felt the sharp peak of the needle break her skin. Oh dear, she couldn't watch. The fact that it was Kabuto messing around with a needle near her arm made her want to grab it from his hand and stick it through his leg.

_Calm down. Breathe in… Breathe out…_

It didn't help that her eyes fell on the shelf with glowing green containers. Inside one of them, there was a floating pink eyeball staring back at her.

_God, I am going to puke_.

Akane smashed her mouth shut, throat burning. She didn't want to close her eyes and alert Kabuto, so she continued to stare at the body of a two-headed snake floating in the green chemical. Again, not a comforting sight.

_Oh please, please, please…_

"Done."

She snatched the gauze from his other hand and pressed it to the small bleeding dot. It didn't hurt, and Kabuto really _was_ gentle after his initiative grab, but it was still far from convincing her to trust the man. And now, sitting so close to him that their knees almost touched made her feel vulnerable and yet even more stubborn not to break.

"You are a curious case, Akane-san," he stated slowly and she swore she saw his eyes narrow just the tinniest bit at her, "With time, I might make a better evaluation of your personality…"

Before she had the time to counter, he got up to his feet and neared the desk. A few drops of her blood smeared a thin glass sheet and then the medic put it under the microscope. Against her better judgment, Akane felt a twinge of excitement when the shinobi exhaled a loud 'Ahaa' through parted lips. She thought she heard him murmur 'Just like the last time' to himself and couldn't stop herself from asking out loud.

"What is it?"

The medic leaned back from the microscope to peak at her from the corner of his eyes. They were black and sharp and it seemed as though she was being dissected, inch by inch, her every secret and thought laid bare for his judgment. It wasn't a pleasant sensation.

"Yes, a curious case is the best way to put it," the medic repeated lightly, ignoring her question altogether. Then, in a few steps, he was standing in front of her again, his hand raised and expectant.

"Give me your arm."

"What?" the alarm bells in Akane's head rang so loudly that her whole being shook.

_(**Fear.** Again? Your reactions are getting boringly repetitive, Akane…)_

"I need to check something," the man hurried her, "Your arm, please."

The girl hesitated for a few seconds before reluctantly placing her right arm in his outstretched one. She felt herself relax when Kabuto didn't reach out for any of the sharp instruments on the table, but simply sat himself across from her, cradling her arm in both of his now. Perplexed, she watched as he closed his eyes, and how his face stilled in concentration and…

…And then there was a weird wave of _something _flowing through her arm, and it twisted and curled and she felt positively _awkward_. The strange sensation slipped through her muscles and nerves, filling her to the tips of her small fingers. Akane had to swallow a gasp when she realized that her hands were softly throbbing and that the medic was tracing a finger along her upper arm. Sometimes the pressure would get higher as he proceeded to examine for whatever he was looking for on her skin. She stayed quiet, trying to understand what was happening, but just as abruptly as it came, the smooth liquid feeling faded away and Kabuto let go of her hand.

"Incredible. This is… out of this world," the white-haired man gazed at her and Akane's gut clenched. The exclamation was too freakishly true.

"What is?" she inquired in a flat tone, trying to sound none-too-interested, although she was, in reality, burning to find out. The medic was now leaning toward her, hands on the sides of her neck and sending those weird impulses through her skin. _He must be using chakra, _she concluded. Although the strong urge to push the ninja away was still ever-so-present, the curiosity about his next words reached its peak and dominated over her more protective side.

"Your physical chakra is produced by photophosphorylation and cellular respiration, and is used by enzymes and structural proteins in cellular processes, including biosynthetic reactions, motility, and cell division. The strange thing is that this is all completely normal…"

The quizzical statement made her pause. "I beg your pardon?"

Kabuto was now tracing the tips of his fingers along her temples in a curious, albeit professional manner, and she itched to slap his hands away from her face.

"The fact is that you do indeed have chakra, and those particular cells are created through completely normal processes. However, _why_ your chakra cells are mixed with the blood ones is the most extraordinary case…"

"Then, by all means, enlighten me," she bristled, perfectly aware that the man _was_ willing to tell her something, yet he was purposely delaying the moment, if only to irritate her further.

"As you wish." Several seconds had to pass before Kabuto spoke again, in a calm and detached manner, "The thing is that your body _doesn't even have a chakra network_, which defies all laws of nature. I assume that you know that _every _living creature possesses this network, which serves as a transporter for the chakra, so it can get to every organ in the body. Your chakra, however normal in its structure, is located _directly in the blood and organs_, and dies the moment it is out of its container, i.e. the body."

_Oh screw biology._ Akane was never good at it anyways, and she was certainly not going to start studying it now. Trying to ignore the way he was poking around her spine, she strained the words through her teeth as politely as she could:

"So what you're trying to say is…?"

"What I'm trying to say is that your whole organism is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. So _**imperfect**_**.** While I could _feel_ the physical energy of chakra in your cells and see it under the microscope, the spiritual energy is gathered in only one coil in the head area around the temples. Let me put it this way: if you, by some stupid idea, ever wished to become a ninja, you would be sadly disappointed. There is biologically no way that you could mix these two so called 'chakras', which are so _uselessly_ divided in your body. To explain it in the most simple of the words to you: your _blood_ is your _only_ source of life."

Akane stared at him, dumbfounded, trying to connect this man's blabbering to the biology of her world. Feeling the first signs of a migraine, she decided to start from the very beginning: in Narutoverse, chakra was the combination of physical and spiritual energies. That much she knew. The physical one was created through mitochondrial cells. In her world, this energy really exists and it is called ATP. That is the energy our body creates from food. Alright, Kabuto said she had that one. Normal.

He also said she had the spiritual energy, which is located somewhere around the place on her forehead that the occultists in her world liked to call 'The third eye'. It came to her that maybe this 'spiritual energy' represented the soul, but chose not to dwell too much on that thought, since the existence of a soul was a disputable topic back in her world.

Kabuto also said that her body was _imperfect_ and _divided _by these energies, and by the way he said it, it seemed as that was the most unusual thing in this world. It made Akane question how much the people in her world were in homeostasis with themselves and nature. It made her understand why there were so many philosophical discussions about the question "What prevails: mind over body, or body over the mind?" Apparently, people of Narutoverse didn't have this problem, as they were created by the perfectly-balanced mixture of both energies, which in turn made them more in harmony with nature, as seen by the elemental-natured chakra shinobi could conjure.

And the last conclusion: Kabuto seemed really puzzled that her only source of life was her blood. That was, however, absolutely normal in her world. Which meant that in Narutoverse people could be healed more effectively, since they could be treated with both energies, or in one word- chakra. This was frequently seen in the series, as the medic nins could deal with the most serious of the injuries with their chakra only. There was also the case of Chiyo, who brought Gaara back from the dead, which would be impossible in her world no matter how much blood you pumped into him.

In the end Kabuto was right. If compared to what was considered normal in _this_ world, Akane's internal structure was one simple _freak-show_, poor and incomplete, intriguing only because of the rarity of it. All of these facts made her feel slightly inferior and she couldn't help but feel a little giddy about it.

"… Well that is all just splendid. What a relief. Excuse me while I go to my room to celebrate."

She felt sick, tired, her head hurt, and if Kabuto wished to keep her in here for more tests, then he had another thing coming… The eighteen-year-old was just about stand up, when the medic spoke and froze her dead in her tracks.

"I'm grateful for your cooperation Akane-san," his silky voice washed over her like ice cold water, causing goose bumps to rise on the back of her arms, and Akane might have let the mockery slip if it were not for the medic's next sentence.

"I do wonder if the results would be as interesting as these if I were to, say, get a moment alone with Hana-chan…"

This time, the taunt was unbearable. Akane felt like springing from her chair and hitting the young man across the face, regardless of all possible consequences. She stood to her feet, almost making the chair turn over, and clenched her fists at her sides until her knuckles turned white.

"We had a deal," she spoke quietly, fleetingly glad that she sounded more angry than mortified, "You can't touch her… Orochimaru-san said—Don't you dare touch her or I'll…" She didn't know how to finish the sentence. And to her utter _shock_, Kabuto only chuckled.

She gaped at him. _He was __**laughing**__ at her._

"Bastard," an angry hiss escaped her lips before she could stop herself. "You actually find it _funny_, do you not?"

"Such raw emotion," he stated with a charming smile, ignoring the first real insult she hurled at him. "And yes, you're absolutely right. I apologize if I disturbed you, Akane-san."

Kabuto was aware of the deal most definitely, and this made Akane question the motive behind his taunting. It couldn't have been out of pure hatred because, to be honest, he couldn't really care less about her. Then why did he--

_He was only testing me. This whole time. All the minor pecks, the annoying comments. They only served to test what makes me tick. And now…_

_(And now you only confirmed what he already suspected the first time you two talked about Hana in the bar. Great, Akane. Really smooth.)_

Too caught up in her own thoughts, the girl didn't notice when the medic stood up and started assembling the equipment on the desk.

"As for your… request, I'll arrange for you to meet with Orochimaru-sama tomorrow morning," Kabuto continued talking, intentionally disregarding the terrified look on Akane's face.

"But why tomorrow?" the girl protested tiredly, "Hana doesn't have where to sleep. I told her I'll provide her a futon tonig--"

"Because, as I already mentioned this morning, we are moving," the man only sighed, in a delightfully patronizing manner that would have made her grind her teeth in any other situation. That moment, however, Akane chose to stop herself from blinking in confusion.

"… Moving? Who is moving? And where? Wh--"

"Stop," he cut her off, "You will be told what Orochimaru-sama thinks you need to be aware of. Orochimaru-sama, Sasuke, you and I are moving to another location. That's all you need to know for now."

"And Hana?"

"…Yes. Hana as well."

"Good," she was missing something here. She just felt it. But, even so, the situation made perfect sense to her. The girl already knew from the series that Orochimaru switched between bases weekly, as to not be tracked down by his various enemies. And as the case was, they have already spent too much time in this one (she and Hana had been there a few weeks, if she was correct) so the old Snake must have gotten quite paranoid. So, they were moving and taking her and Hana with them, which was a good sign. Maybe Orochimaru believed her now more than he initially did.

Content with her analysis of the current scenario, Akane turned to the medic again, "So, when are we leaving then?"

"I would say… right about now."

This time, she blinked. "Excuse me?"

Kabuto stepped forward and in a matter of seconds he was standing in front of her. The white-haired man's glasses sparked under the fiery candlelight and, to Akane, it almost looked like he was mischievously smirking... Almost. Wait… Was he...?

"That's right. I said, right now."

The next thing she knew was…

_THUMP._

… absolutely nothing.

**

* * *

Translation: ****Modus vivendi- Implies an accommodation between disputing parties to allow life to go on. It usually describes informal and temporary arrangements in political affairs.**

**A/N: The background color for the story has just been changed to ****purple,**** which represents the Crown Chakra (representative of pure thought; this chakra connects one with the infinite consciousness and is associated with transformation). Purple is often used to represent royalty, imperial power and truth.**

**The poll is closed with this chapter. The winner is Sasuke, Orochimaru being beaten by one vote. Kabuto didn't have much luck though. THIS chapter, however, is full of him, so Kabuto fans- enjoy it. **

**Please leave a review and a tap on the head. ^_^ Thank you for reading!**


	16. Cogito, ergo sum

**Chapter sixteen:**

**Cogito, ergo sum**

**A/N: Well how's that… I say I won't update regularly anymore, and here I am, posting the sixteenth chapter on Friday! And it's a long one. Anyway… Enjoy!**

* * *

When Akane woke up the next morning it was to an equally dark, equally plain, if only a bit wider room.

Anger built up at this irritatingly repetitive scenario as she held in a shriek of indignation.

Because now she didn't know which country they were in. Because now she was knocked unconscious by the same man _twice_, carried like a freaking rag-doll, and unable to do _anything_ about it. Because she'd learned martial arts in her world, but, when it came to it, _that _had been absolutely worthless when trying to fight back _ninja_, who were so much stealthier, faster, and_ stronger_ than her. Because here, everything she had known in her world, everything she had prided herself on— it was all utterly _useless._

So…her natural response kicked in: she _almost_ cried. However at the sound of footsteps her emotional turmoil ceased. It was ridiculous how undeniably glad she was when the person entered the room. Her expression gave nothing away, though, taking on the artificial mask of calmness she'd been so carefully crafting since arrival in Oto, thus freezing the infant tears before they'd even truly formed.

"Good morning, Akane-san," the medic greeted nonchalantly, as if he found nothing strange about the events that had taken place only yesterday. _Two can play that game, _the girl thought gingerly and vomited the words before they could recede back down her throat.

"Good morning, Kabuto-san."

Kabuto proceeded to spew fake apologies and insignificant explanations, per usual, and Akane merely nodded and smiled. The truth was, the eighteen-year-old really could've cared less. All she could hear was the loud thrashing of her heart and she couldn't decide if it had been caused from the built up anger towards the medic-nin or caused by a salty mixture of determination and fear of her imminent meeting with Orochimaru that morning.

* * *

She inhaled the scent of earth. The hallways were narrow and cool in the new lair. The roots of the massive trees above crawled all over the walls and ceiling, littering the floor with debris. It was not hard to guess that they were underground. The vegetation in the upper world must have been glorious, she thought, green and luscious; a forest of tall dark oaks and sweetly-scented grass. She sighed, the sight was probably one to behold, however, she would never know. She couldn't see it from the tomb she'd been encased in, snatched away from life and locked under tons of dried up earth and murky dirt. As they proceeded further into the complex, the halls grew less constricting and the roots disappeared. Torches illuminated the space with their warm flames; contrasting starkly to the wretched horrid beings that they protected from the surface. If Akane had not known what she knew, then perhaps she would've found the place quite peaceful. However, knowing had created the feeling of dread that was slowly sinking into the pit of her stomach, churning her insides and causing her to keep her wits about her at all times.

Kabuto seemed to be intent on ignoring her, and in all honesty, Akane had no problem with that. The walk to the Snake's chambers wasn't long. After several minutes, the medic stopped in front one of the multiple scattered rooms. He knocked lightly on the plain door and after hearing one hoarse 'Enter', they ventured in.

Warmth was the first thing the girl noticed. A smell of freshly prepared food, and then her limbs went cold when she spotted the figure of the ghostly- pale man merely a few meters in front of her. But nothing, nothing at all, could have prepared the girl for the next shock she witnessed.

…Orochimaru was having breakfast.

No. He was not sitting in his throne-like chair, condemning people to their deaths, slicing throats, scheming the word's demise, drinking blood or even doing anything near what might be defined as dangerous or twisted. He was not even dressed in his trademark ninja clothing _and_ the ugly purple ribbon was nowhere in sight. No and no. One of the legendary Sannin and the top S-ranked criminal, Orochimaru, preferably addressed as Orochimaru-_sama,_ was just sitting at the table, dressed in a long, purple kimono with a black lining, and simply eating his breakfast.

To put it bluntly, Akane suddenly felt very _a__wkward._

It took her a few agonizing moments of rationalization to admit to herself that Orochimaru was, in fact, a living creature and did indeed have a basic instinct to eat. However, the picture of Orochimaru doing anything remotely _human_ clashed with everything she had ever known of him.

She also couldn't get over the fact that the room was very modest; bigger and more decorated than hers, yes, but that was to be expected. There was no bed, but there were two doors, one of which probably led to his sleeping quarters. The small room was cramped with mostly stacks of books and scrolls. There were long shelves along each of the four walls on which were placed bottles of ink, green containers and ninja gear amongst the piles and piles of paper. Akane tried to read the titles of some of the books under the glow of the candlelight, but failed miserably.

"Something on your mind, my dear?"

Her curious look snapped back to the source of the voice and the eighteen-year-old almost jumped when she met Orochimaru's look, half-expecting it to be highly murderous. It wasn't. Those strange, animalistic eyes peered dauntlessly at her. His expression could have easily been the one he used to inspect a book; neither kind nor malevolent: just… interested.

Not really thinking about what she was doing, Akane pointed to the heaped up scrolls. "Have you read all of these?"

There was a slight moment of pause. If Akane didn't know any better, she would've thought that Orochimaru was genuinely surprised by her question.

"Read?" he echoed slowly. Then a smile curled like smoke across the snake's face, outlining the playful glitter in his eyes. "Akane-chan, I wrote most of those myself. I'm afraid that the limited edition I left in this base," he lazily motioned to the shelves that were heavily overfilled with books, "wasn't very… _satisfying_ for my tastes."

This meant that not only had he read all of them, but that he also knew them by heart and had even surpassed the restriction for knowledge they represented to him. Against herself, Akane found herself marveling his sheer brilliance. She watched in morbid fascination when the Sannin put the last of his breakfast into his mouth (rice and eggs, she saw and her stomach churned in hunger) and watered it down with a sip of a dark red liquid. Kabuto was still standing by the door, the girl noted with a mild distaste, and so she continued to stand in the middle of the room, quiet. When Orochimaru finished his meal, he pushed the plate aside and pulled the jug of red wine closer to him.

"Kabuto tells me that you wished to see me," he filled his glass intently as he spoke, "so you could make a… request?" Feeling more than slightly foolish, the girl remained mute. He was watching her, equally as silent, merely observing.

Patience. The man obviously had no virtues save that one. Eventually Akane chose to gather all of her courage, take a deep, _deep_ breath and ask away.

Everything was give and take.

It was one of the first things that Akane learned in her short life. Give and be given in return. Everything worked this way. But... humans were funny creatures, rather fickle, and intent on breaking the rules at all costs. Some people could give, and give, and give... without asking for anything in return. And some people took. They took from anyone and everyone around them, until nothing was left, and then they moved on.

And then again, there were people who could do both. They could take from others, and still give back as much as they took. An equivalent exchange: anything less was unspeakable. Akane was such a person, and her new _host_ would have to learn that.

And in that moment of stupid boldness, Akane decided to voice out her concerns, "My friend, Hana, is sleeping on the cold of the stone in your dungeon. I merely ask for some sleeping furniture for her. A futon would be just fine."

The laughter had come then, like the burbling of water over rocks in a creek. Clearly missing the joke, the girl watched, perplexed, as the Sannin wiped the corners of his eyes with his thumbs. When he finally brought his attention back to her, his lips twitched into a small contemplating smirk. Akane was on needles and pins in apprehension when the man opened his mouth to speak.

"Done," was all Orochimaru replied.

The shattering of a wine glass echoed throughout the chamber. _Snap._ The dark crimson liquid spilled onto the floor, almost black under the light of the candles.

Akane stood, eyes wide and bewildered. _What in the world?!_

As he poured another glass, the Snake Sannin asked again. "What else do you desire?"

What? Again? Was this scandalous man going to shatter another glass with her answer? Akane leaned back slightly and watched him warily, a small breath caged in her throat. He was leaning against the table with a mischievous grin on his face. The glass of wine rested safely in his hand, but hovered dangerously in the air.

"I… S-She wants some real food. Something to eat other than the rice she's been given…" her voice was starting to die out. The girl cursed herself for ever deeming this man anything more than confusing and dangerous. A strange situation had taken place and the eighteen-year-old didn't know what to make of it.

_Snap_.

_Crash. _

"Done."

More of the wine stained the stone. Under the ominous glitter of the candlelight, the puddle of liquid looked disturbingly like freshly spilled blood_._ Akane felt sick at the thought.

"Is there anything else you _request_?" Orochimaru's voice wove lace fine threads of persuasion in the warm air: lulling, convincing, mollifying. "Do you, perhaps, wish for your freedom?"

Akane was mortified. _What is this? What is he—My God, why is he saying all this?_

"Yess, I think you do," his lips split into a dark promising smile as he finished filling up another glass. Akane half-expected him to crush it again between his bare fingers again, but he only put it on the table in front of him instead. "But let us see if you have what it takes, shall we? … Come here."

And so she did, pulled forward by those two silky, yet dangerously sharp words. The contrast of his tone with his command was stark—almost insulting. She took a few steps forward, her mind blank, knowing not what to expect from the unpredictable man.

"Take it," he said, motioning to the glass on the table between them. The red liquid splashed against the walls of its container innocently.

"I don't drink," she managed to choke out.

"That's not what I'm offering you, Akane-chan." A short laugh. "Take it," his voice became one full of thinly veiled impatience and chilling reminders of how easily he bored. "_Crush it._"

She didn't understand. None of it. But still, she shakily took the glass in her hand. Her fingertips traced its round edge absently. _Crush it,_ he had said._ What point exactly is he trying to prove here_? The girl met the cold glow of his yellow eyes, hypnotic and deadly, and decided not to question it. In one quick, angry motion, she clenched her fingers around the glass. She put all of her strength into her hand and felt the muscles of her arm tensing and struggling, and _God why in the world is it so hot here, _and then _I can't breathe_ and then…

_Snap._

Hundreds of pristine glass shards showered down onto the stone floor, several marred by bright red blood. The clinking sounds that resulted from their ultimate contact with the floor echoed in the confined space. Akane's fist unclenched reflexively, as if burned, and the stinging pain shot through her nerves just like the sharp pieces did through her flesh. She watched her palm, horrified, the bizarre collage of beautiful glass sparks, ripped skin and burning vermilion of the wine, coated all over with the crimson red,_ red_**,** **God** so much _**red**_ of her own blood. She could hear, like through a thick dizzying haze, Orochimaru speaking to someone in his usual, oily speech.

"Kabuto, send a squad into the nearest populated town. Let them raid and ravish it of all the food and housing equipment," he said, remorselessly, like merely commenting on the weather. "If any of the villagers feel the need to interfere…" a small helpless shrug, "… kill them." Like all those people were just another detail to him. Absorbed like sunshine, forgotten like shade.

_--People are going to be murdered! Slaughtered! All for--… all for a little food… and… and…_

All because of her and Hana. Only because of their needs. She was still looking at her bleeding palm, unable to move in abhorrence, watching as the sticky substance gushed from the open slices and dripped onto the floor where it was mixed perfectly in color with the previously spilled alcoholic beverage.

_Red wine… Red blood… _Sucha morbid analogy had Orochimaru made. And the lifeof a human, so fragile, like glass. So darn _breakable_, pathetic under the claws of a man of his cruelty and power. Of his depraved mind. _Snap. _And there it goes. How utterly pathetic.

"_Do you, perhaps, wish for your freedom?"_

_You know I do. I do, I do, I do so much!_

_(He knows.)_

"_Let us see if you have what it takes…"_

_I can't break it like you can. The glass crumbles perfectly under your vicious hands, unmarred and pale. Under mine, it just hurts. _

_(They bleed, you bleed. But he already knows this. __**This**__ is what he wanted to show us, is it not?)_

Blood. Such is the price of freedom. She understood it now.

"Anything else, darling?" the innocent sugary voice brought up her hazed eyes from the sight of her bloodstained hand to its speaker. Orochimaru was smirking down at her, white fangs displayed in a wide leering grin. A small warm droplet glided down her finger and splashed against the stone. As the panic started to build up in her chest, Akane realized how severely she was trembling.

"No. Nothing at all," she replied as she came to her senses, much too quiet and much too fast, "If you'll excuse me…"

She excused herself with no actual excuses, quickly producing a small bow, and walked out of the room, deciding not to bandage her injured hand as a punishment for being weak and stupid.

…_and so despicably human._

* * *

All she wanted was to just go back to her little dusty room this time. That's all. She just wanted to go there without running into anyone, hoping none would see how her breathing was out of proportion, to see the trail of blood she was leaving behind her with the smell of expensive alcohol. Unfortunately, Akane had no such luck.

The girl was returning through the hallway by memory solely. She knew that the medic would catch up with her in a matter of minutes, but right now, she just wanted to be alone.

_Innocent people are going to die. And it's my fault… No, it's Han-- …My fault. She is my responsibility. I should have thought more about her when I made the deal in the first place…_

She was so deeply in thought that she didn't even care to acknowledge the figure approaching her from the other side of the hall. Only when the person was right beside her and passing her by an inch did she raise her head to recognize the perfectly emotionless, perfectly raven-haired, Uchiha Sasuke.

The said Uchiha didn't, however, bother to acknowledge her with any other reaction but a slightly raised eyebrow. The look he was giving her was neither interested nor puzzled, neither mocking nor friendly. It didn't convey much emotion at all, really.

It was an '_Oh…' _which seemed to say, _'you seem familiar,'_ and_ '…You're still alive?_', and then a, '_That's a first,_' kind of look and Akane tried wholeheartedly to ignore it. Sasuke seemed to be assessing the wound on her hand for a moment, before he simply continued on down the hall, towards Orochimaru's room.

"Good morning, Sasuke-kun. I see you got up early today as well," the third voice broke the mutual silent-treatment between the two. Both Akane and Sasuke turned to the newcomer and Akane mentally relaxed when she saw it was only Kabuto. Sasuke's greeting wasn't a very warm one though; the boy replied with nothing and continued to walk pass the approaching medic-nin.

"I wouldn't suggest bothering Orochimaru-sama right now… Didn't he tell that he'll train you this afternoon?" the medic reluctantly continued, shooting a distasteful glare in Sasuke's direction. The Uchiha returned the glare with his very own _'bite me'_ look, before promptly turning his back to the white-haired man and leaving on his merry little way.

A sigh. "…Never mind, then."

Akane followed Kabuto the rest of the way to her room, casting quick, insecure looks over her shoulder. The Uchiha vanished around the corner just as quickly as he appeared and to her surprise, Akane felt lonelier than ever. Kabuto left as soon as they reached her new room, and once again Akane sat on her bed, wishing her pride would just let her cry. Wishing that she could cry, scream, yell and just throw a tantrum until she fell asleep. Wishing and waiting and wanting…

* * *

The candle, Akane noticed, was very amusing. And so, naturally, having nothing better to do in her room, she decided to watch it. _Very closely._ She sat on the moth-eaten blanket, scratched her arms where they were irritated by the rough fabric of the kimono, and watched as the fire danced. The blinding white core left spots in her peripheral vision, and she blinked to clear them. The flame itself was far too bright for her. So, instead, she directed her attention to the pool of melted wax that had formed around the base of the wick. It was clear, almost like water, and it glinted a little in the warm flame's light.

The candle was pretty, Akane decided. Prettier than the walls. Prettier than the desk and the bed. In fact, it was the only thing worth looking at, she nodded to herself. So she continued to watch the candle, gently swaying on her folded legs, cradling her scarred hand and whispering an old song to entertain herself.

"She's locked up with a spinning wheel  
She can't recall what it was like to feel  
She says, 'This room's gonna be my grave  
And there's no one who can save me'…" the girl stopped when she realized she couldn't remember the lyrics anymore. English sounded almost alien to her. The revelation conveyed itself in a deep frown on her face. She couldn't remember the words at all.

And it had been one of her favorite songs, too.

She didn't want to sing anymore.

Feeling miserable, the girl brought her gaze back at the candle. Flakes of dust danced in the light, weightless, free. The wax was still melting and dripping down the candle's side, just like tears would down a human face. Akane was glad. _At least one of us has enough of a common sense to cry_, she thought, but did not speak it aloud to the candle. After all, it didn't have any mouth and couldn't reply to her. And Akane wanted to hear a reply rid of riddles and malice** so badly**.

_What the hell am I doing?_

She slapped herself lightly on the face. Drowning in miserable self-pity was useless; adversities had to be faced, not dodged. Her current situation seemed helpless at first glance, but there were still things she could do, she _needed_ to do—such as think of a plan to escape.

"But where would we go?" she asked out loud, telling herself that she _didn't _really just ask the question to a candle. She eyed the little flame critically. It looked like it was listening very carefully to her and Akane felt extremely pleased.

_Back to_ _Futari, of course, _was the first mechanical thought and the soothsayer couldn't do anything against the wave of memories that washed over her at the very mention of her previous home. She remembered Makoto-obaasama, the only person she would ever call the honorable suffix. Her gaze fell on her hands. Black dried up blood stuck beneath her nails, no matter how hard she had scrubbed, and there were a few diagonal slices, irregular and ugly that stretched across her flesh, as well.

_Makoto-obaasama would have had a healing cream for it_, she thought. The old woman would have cleaned it first, gently, with a warm wet cloth, and taken her hurt hand between her ancient wrinkly fingers. Akane had always liked her hands, she thought fondly. They were rough for a woman and the skin was painted with dark sun-spots but, to Akane, they were the most beautiful hands in the world. She couldn't remember her mother's hands anymore, but she was content to know that they must have been the same, housewife's hands, beautiful in their modesty and gentleness.

_(But she is gone_- a bored yawn- _just like they all are.)_

She frowned and tried to dull the ache that was gradually building up in her heart. She didn't want to think about them. She didn't want to remember Futari, Ken, and her parents, and then her little sister. All the things she had lost.

No, she had to think about Hana, and herself, and…

…_dear Lord they would find us anywhere._

The realization hit her like a physical blow. No matter where they went, Orochimaru would find them. There was no denying the man's wide connections and willing minions. There was no place they could go to and expect to live a normal, carefree life anymore, for she had bound herself to the devil… They didn't belong in Narutoverse, and Akane knew that the world would never accept them into the scheme of things. They were outsiders—aliens. It was one of those moments when she seriously considered killing herself. Not because of any selfish thought of ending her misery, nothing like that. But she thought that maybe, just maybe, this act could take her home. Just like in the many fanfictions she had used to read.

But then she would remember that this was not fiction, that everything was too frighteningly real and that she didn't want to die here. Not because the thought of death scared her, but because here, in this world, nobody would remember her. Because here, she wouldn't leave behind anything worth mentioning. Here, she would only die like an imprisoned peasant girl that would fade into fragmented nothingness.

The conclusion was crystal clear in her eyes. They had to get back home. No matter what.

For what seemed like a zillionth time, Akane began replaying their arrival scene at the Valley of the End. She had already concluded that they appeared at the end of the Naruto-Sasuke fight. They'd appeared somewhere in the water, or had fallen into the water, but it was impossible to pinpoint the exact place because of the currents created by the waterfall.

Rewind. In her world, she was going to by some bread, met Hana by the way, and then fell through the ground into something… black… when the earthquake started. Along with one parked car.

Akane was missing something here… _Oh yes_,she smiled bitterly, _the logic._

But there _had_ to be a connection between the two events. Anything! Still, she found none and, irritated, opted for a different approach.

_Why did we appear in that old episode?_ She puzzled over,_ And during that particular scene too? _Maybe this all had more to do to what was happening in the series. She tried to remember the fight and almost laughed. Who would've thought that the information so stupidly irrelevant could be used in a life-or-death situation?!

But the episode was emitted long ago, and she couldn't recall anything useful. She remembered that Sasuke and Naruto talked a lot, there were like hundreds of flashbacks, Naruto was bathed in Kyuubi's chakra and Sasuke entered the second stage of the cursed seal. Each did their ultimate technique, Rasengan and Chidori, clashed in mid-air with a battle cry, there was a big black… thing… with kanji around it and…

…and…

_Oh my God._

The black thing! She and Hana had fallen into a black thing!

Akane jumped to her feet, positively ecstatic over her realization. She started to pace the small room, hand on her chin in a thinking manner. She could feel the wheels in her head spinning rapidly!

"The clash of the two super-powered techniques accumulated the chakra so great that it must have transformed into a type of a portal!" she explained to herself out loud, afraid that the thought might escape her if not vocalized right away, "And in the real world, it appeared randomly, under ground, _causing_ the earthquake and shattering the street above. Completely coincidentally, Hana and I were its victims…"

_(And how are you going to go home now, hmmm?)_

The desperate thought made itself known and the girl crumpled to her bed, more than just disappointed.

_Are we supposed to wait for another great clash of the ninja? And we are supposed to just coincidentally be there when that happens? How are we supposed to even survive till then?_

The girl tried to remember all of Naruto's grand fights. It seemed most logical that it was the Kyuubi's chakra that was great enough to rip an inter-dimensional passage. Her brows furrowed. She hated sci-fi.

_Concentrate_.

Shippuuden was supposed to start every week now. In the 'Rescuing Gaara arc' Naruto didn't get any big fights. But after that, on the bridge, he was supposed to battle none other than Orochimaru! If she remembered correctly, in one moment the four-tailed Naruto created a big black ball of chakra. It didn't have any kanji on it though, and she remembered that even the Snake Sannin said that he would have died if he were to be hit with it. But maybe… just maybe… she and Hana wouldn't. In any case, they couldn't wait for the Naruto's next epic battle with Pain. It was too far away and Akane knew that neither she nor Hana could survive that long. This was their only chance.

The price of freedom was blood, she learned. They would either die there, under the sky and sun, or go home. But they would know that they'd at least tried.

"It's alright… I can do this," she whispered. It wasn't very convincing. "I can do this." She repeated it until her voice no longer quavered, until she actually began to believe herself.

_(Until she actually began to believe her _lie).

A plan had begun to form.

She could only hope it would be enough to get them out alive.

**

* * *

Translation: Cogito, ergo sum- I think, therefore I am.**

**A/N: The song is "Shalott" by Emilie Autumn. There you go, Sasuke made another brief appearance! ... Geez, he's not much of a talker, is he? :-/ **

**So… Liked the chapter? Hated it? Which part? Why? Don't be lazy, just click the little review button down there and share your opinion. ^^**


	17. Dum spiro, spero

**Chapter seventeen:**

**Dum spiro, spero**

**A/N: You'll notice that this chapter is written a little bit differently than the previous ones. It's done like a bunch of short scenes and one-shots, as to emphasize the days passing by. A tip: be sure to pay attention to the psychological portrayals of Hana and, mostly, Akane. It will be of crucial importance for the story.**

* * *

To say that she was confused when she'd been summoned to Orochimaru's chambers the next morning would be an understatement. To say that she'd been truly afraid would be stretching the truth too far. In the end, there was only one simple word that could describe her current state of mind:

_Numb._

And so Akane had a meeting with the Snake Sannin that morning, only the third since she'd been taken prisoner. He was excessively complimentary and manipulatively kind, as usual. He asked her about her vision and she told him about a loud blond boy traveling with the most perverted white-haired old man. Orochimaru listened to her without interrupting even once, a distant, thoughtful look on his face. He explained to her that from now on she would come to him directly with her prophecies, first thing every morning. And then she would be…

"Free," he had said, and before her heart could even dare to flutter, he continued in his rich slithery speech, "to wander the halls, of course. You may visit the little one and Kabuto shall show you the kitchen. I believe you can manage preparing your own meals, ne?"

Akane nodded profusely, not believing her own luck.

_This will give me more opportunities to put my plan in motion and escape!_

Although this had been her primal thought, she also knew that she would never leave without Hana and had a creeping feeling that Orochimaru knew this as well. No, he _counted_ on it; the blithe smile on his face was far too congenial to be true. This supposed freedom of movement was nothing but an attractive veil of deceit. It was ridiculous, really. The roles had been reversed: the Sound shinobi were now the ones that were intent on gaining_ her_ trust, and not the other way around.

In any case, she was cornered. Hana was still behind bars and Akane couldn't do anything until she got her hands on the key. Hopefully, this _trust-test_ would give her more opportunities to figure out some plan so she could snatch it away.

* * *

Hana didn't say a 'thank you' to Akane when she brought her an old futon that day.

Not because she wasn't grateful. She was. Akane saw it, despite the girl's vain attempt to hide her tear-filled eyes. Unlike the older girl, Hana was the type of person that easily cried, be it from sadness… or desperate happiness.

Not because she was spiteful either. Admittedly, she could've been, but not then. Definitely not then.

Hana didn't say it because she was gaping at Akane's shredded palm, mouth wide open in unmasked horror.

"I-I didn't think…" the younger girl croaked, "I didn't think t-they would-"

"I'll bring you something to eat later," Akane interrupted immediately, "I got a permission to move around the base and cook our meals. Isn't that great?"

Hana stared at her, obviously not thinking so, too taken aback back at the extent of Akane's injury to fully appreciate what this news would mean to their eventual escape. Her lips were trembling in a barely sustained shriek.

But she knew her older companion didn't like it when she fussed. She knew Akane was far too proud to complain or talk about it. Akane knew how to take care of herself, and this was not a wound made in clumsiness.

She'd been hurt.

Purposefully.

Hana'd spent enough time with the long-haired girl to know that she didn't like to be pitied and that any _weakness_, as Akane called it, shouldn't be discussed as a normal occurrence. Knowing this, she kept her mouth shut (a hard thing to do taking her personality in mind) and pretended she didn't see when the older girl hid her scarred hand under the folds of her gray kimono.

Akane softly smiled, grateful.

* * *

The kitchen, as she found out, was but a small messy room with a sink, a table with one chair, a few appliances, drawers and a fridge. The floor was covered in clean silvery tiles and there was a simple bare light bulb hanging from the above. The room even had electricity.

Akane meandered around the kitchen day after day, making mental notes of all the food and equipment. Bored out of her wits, the girl organized the plates, pots, cutlery… She stared hypnotized at the knife for chopping vegetables for the longest time, contemplating the many, _many _things she could use it for. Then, she snapped out of her thoughts, inwardly horrified, because her face had held a tiny, disturbing smirk.

"You are _mad_," she muttered to herself matter-of-factly, "You are definitely going mad."

The long-haired girl turned around to place the knife on the table, when she almost dropped it in surprise. There, at the door, stood a tall figure with jet-black hair, staring unashamedly at her. When she collected all of her wits, Akane spoke in the most polite tone she could produce at the moment:

"Oh… Good day, Uchiha-san. You startled me."

_Damn ninja and their cat-like stealth._ She tried to keep her facial expression perfectly straight as she repeatedly kicked him in her mind.

Of course, being his usual social self, Sasuke completely ignored her good-natured greeting. He merely entered the room and, being the gentleman he was, sat himself at the_ only_ available chair, interlacing his fingers before him.

And then… he just sat there.

Akane also just stood, watching this strange behavior. Alas, the girl was stubborn enough to try and beat him at his own thou-art-not-worthy-of-my-attention game, and so she promptly returned to her previous chore. She proceeded to assemble the forks, not uttering another sentence.

"They left."

The two words came as a total shock to her! She was just accepting the plausible theory that the boy was only another of the inanimate objects in the room. Not quite sure of what miracle had just taken place, the girl turned _extremely slow_ly to face him, afraid that any sudden movement might burst the illusion.

"What?"

The self-proclaimed avenger's expression remained completely impassive as he replied, "Orochimaru and Kabuto. They won't be back until evening."

Strange enough, there was something akin to _a challenge_ in his eyes. Akane was completely stupefied. Was she supposed to reply to his statement? How could she give a response to something so…resolute? Instead, she decided for a small, mute nod. As in '_Well…ok._' Then she turned her back to him again and began preparing a meal for Hana. She absent-mindedly cut in a tomato, trying to figure out some meaning behind Sasuke's words. So what? The two left the base for some time, leaving her behind with the Uchiha who clearly had no opinion on her being here whatsoever and…

… there was no one to stop her from waltzing right out of the base to her freedom.

A small pause between her chops. She couldn't help but chuckle at his implication, as she pressed the knife into the vegetable again, a bit harder than necessary. _If it were only that easy…_

"I'm making lunch for_ my friend_," she addressed him over her shoulder, curious to see if he would understand _her_ implication, "Her name is Hana. She is only a little younger than you." Then she added, in a polite voice, "Would you like some, too?"

She was either in an alternate dimension, or Sasuke was feeling extremely conversationally today, because he spoke immediately.

"Why?"

A small anxious pause. "Excuse me?"

His dark eyes narrowed in strict demand, "Why are you doing all this?" _Why__ do you submit?__ Why don't you escape while you can?_

Hesitation. It took her some time to define her answer, which Sasuke waited for incredibly patiently.

Then she faced his expecting stare once more and let a raw, tired smile grace her lips, one that held both sadness and bitterness. "Because of friendship…because of love. She's my responsibility. I'm not going to just _abandon _her."

Sasuke was anything but content with her answer. The Uchiha avenger's relatively blank expression watered itself down into a deep displeased frown.

"You are a fool."

_(__**Smash**__ the arrogance from him__!_)

"Hypocrite!" she bit out before she could stop herself.

Sasuke was looking her in the eyes, unimpressed, and Akane felt a sudden urge to avert her gaze. She expected some backlash at least: an angry stare, a sleek jeer…

Definitely not a quiet, genuinely curious inquiry.

"Why do you say that?"

…she was not prepared for such a question. Still, the eighteen-year-old inhaled a deep breath and bravely endured the boy's too black, too dark, too arrogant stare.

She said, "Because everything you do, you have started out of love."

. . .

The girl took his stunned silence as a permission to continue, "As far as I know, you are here because you wish to kill a certain man. You wish to avenge your close ones, the ones you loved. Hate may be the dominant motivation now, but love… Love for your lost family… Isn't that why such hate was born in the first place?"

A volcano of blood in his eyes.

Erupting in red.

And before Akane's lips even had the time to part open in unimaginable fright…

… it disappeared—vanishing in rustling black ashes.

All the air left her lungs. Because for one, small splinter of a moment, Akane could see Sasuke for what he truly was. For there were shadows in his eyes.

Cracks.

Hollows.

Voids.

So bare of their superiority, of carefully created apathy, they were just… sad. Desperate eyes of a broken, lonely boy. And against her nature… Akane felt pity for him. Because for the first time since she'd seen him in the series, she could partially understand him.

_We are both completely alone in the world_…

Akane let herself share his silence for a few restful breaths before suggesting in a gentle half-whisper. "Would you like me to make you some lunch, Uchiha-san?"

The soothsayer managed a single honest smile when Sasuke finally forced out a sound. It was nothing more than a predictable 'Hn', naturally, but it served its purpose: a fickle victory welcomed the girl back into her arms. All the animosity of a minute ago had been eliminated. Akane could easily understand Sasuke's dismissive sound in the various undertones of stubborn surrender and the meek shuffle back to his shady sanctuary of stoicism.

_Uchiha Sasuke may not be so bad after all..._

* * *

The experiments didn't include needles anymore, much to Akane's relief, but various pills and chakra-related inspections. Kabuto would serve her an array of colorful pills, which she would have to swallow one by one, so he could see if they had the same effect on her as they would on a human _with_ a chakra network.

Funny. If Akane didn't know any better, she would have thought that he was trying to dope her up and kill her.

Fortunately, she didn't grow any extra limbs or start coughing up blood. The worst that had happened to her were some rather nasty headaches and only once did she acquire a high fever. Needless to say, Kabuto was extremely satisfied. He called his research 'progress'. Akane liked to call it 'a pain in the ass' but chose not to vocalize her irritation.

Once the medic had tried casting a genjutsu on her. Of course, Akane wasn't aware of this until later. She blinked at him, confused, when he stood in front of her, hands in a hand-seal, mumbling incoherently to himself. When she asked him what he was doing, he seemed surprised. The genjutsu was, according to him, supposed to put her to sleep. He tried it again and again, until the technique finally had effect, and she had dropped into a lovely forced slumber.

_(…PrEtTy… FeAtHeRs…)_

When Akane finally woke up after a fifteen-minute nap, Kabuto explained to her that it had only worked because he manipulated his chakra directly to that single coil of mental chakra on her forehead. This was extremely difficult to do, because normal genjutsu techniques only needed to be concentrated on the opponent, and the user's chakra would flow into him through any of the chakra branches naturally, thus meandering to the center in the brain. If he hadn't known about her… condition, he wouldn't have been able to cast a proper genjutsu on her at all.

"For once, your body's imperfection seems rather useful," the medic-nin had commented and Akane could feel her dislike of Kabuto growing inside of her like a fat hungry parasite. The white-haired man had this inhumane look in his eyes that made her feel like a bag of meat. Oh, _excuse me_, a bag of meat without a chakra network. The rarest kind.

But, good for butchering all the same…

Other than the times they spent in the lab, Kabuto had not been around her at all. Not that Akane was upset by this, but it was odd. She had figured that the annoying medic was assigned to keep tabs on her, so his constant absence was a little confusing. With no one around to annoy her or be annoyed by her, Akane didn't know what to do with herself in the strange and hostile environment she kept finding herself in with each time they switched between bases.

Mostly, it was just boring. Mostly, it gave her too much time to think, to remember all the things that she missed. Her family. Her friends. She thought about what was going to happen to her, because she knew Hana and she wouldn't stay here indefinitely. Their escape was inevitable- Akane was determined of that much, at least.

_Soon_, she repeated to herself_, stay sane just a little longer. You must stay sane at all costs._

Such a comforting thought.

* * *

The sight of Orochimaru with disheveled hair eating his usual dish of rice and eggs in the morning amazingly seized to bother her. Of course, due to the last _pleasant_ time they had spoken about something other than her visions, Akane didn't really wish to indulge in another _polite_ conversation with the man- it was a price too high for extinguishing her boredom. She would report whatever she made up to him, bend her back in a necessary bow, and not see him till the next morning.

And the Sannin's golden eyes would twinkle with unspoken laughter every time. The way the prideful girl bowed her head but so adamantly refused to lower her eyes amused him to no end...

Orochimaru also had a strange regard for politeness and custom, she learned. Akane's initial shock upon finding a beautiful traditional iromuji* kimono, peach in color with a maroon obi**, beside her bed one morning was swept away by puzzlement, only to turn into fierce anger a minute later. Such a gift was an insult to her, for there was a completely condescending meaning behind it.

(_You are being rewarded for your good behavior.)_

Like she was his possession! Like she was a freaking **pet**!

Although she would never admit it to herself, Akane was most apprehensive of Hana's reactions when she took a glimpse of her new clothing. The girl was glad that Hana didn't say a thing when she saw it, but she also couldn't get rid of the feeling that the younger girl had become unusually cold when speaking to her. The two talked superficially and little, because Akane chose not to tell her about her plan until it was the right time and Hana didn't like all the secrecy. There was a gap between the two, growing wider and wider with each minute they've spent together, with each Hana's unusually awkward remark and Akane's guilty silence.

Leaving the moldy dungeon, Akane couldn't help but feel like the loneliest soul in the world.

* * *

The girl wanted to laugh at the irony that the only person she could talk to was none other than the taciturn Uchiha Sasuke himself.

After all, there was always only one kitchen in every base they moved to.

Naturally, none of the two were very happy with the arrangement, but they slowly came to terms with it. When they, by some accident, met at the kitchen, the dark-haired boy would never say much, and Akane followed his suit until her mind was practically _screaming_ for a conversation. In the end, she was so desperate for a decent talk that even someone with half the emotional capacity of a rock such as the Uchiha seemed like an appropriate candidate.

As expected, Sasuke responded dispassionately, tersely and straight to the point. However, after Orochimaru's tricky word-games and Kabuto's mockingly polite comments, Akane found herself enjoying these short, plain conversations with the avenger.

Sasuke wasn't very fond of her, that she could tell, but it didn't seem like he had anything against her presence either. It was easy to understand the weariness and isolation that came from residing with a power-hungry dictator and his lackey, that any form of company would seem entertaining. To him, Akane thought, she was merely a voice box that responded with equal wit and intelligence. She grinned bitterly at that. _How fortunate for him._

"What are you making?"

The eighteen-year-old stifled a laugh. No matter how awfully arrogant the Uchiha could act and how much they disliked each other, this wasn't the first time that Sasuke came to ask her for food.

"Ichiju-sansai***," Akane said, trying to ignore how the meal called back memories of a certain old woman who taught it to her. "Would you like some, Uchiha-san? Be warned, though. I'm afraid I'm not a very good cook," she joked.

"…hn."

Akane rolled her eyes in surrender. Trying to cheer up Uchiha Sasuke was like drawing blood from a stone: frustrating and utterly pointless. She decreased the fire when foamy bubbles appeared at the edges of the small pot. A warm smell of boiled vegetables filled the room. The hiss of the fire as it died out masked a long tired sigh the girl exhaled.

"May I ask you something, Uchiha-san?"

His gaze came up to meet her own, the charcoal black somehow just as arresting as when sparked with fiery red. _What is it?_ it read.

"What is the weather like outside?" she asked.

His eyes widened for only a second. Confusion. Sasuke seemed puzzled over her question, as he couldn't see why in the world she would require such information. But, he replied all the same, in a form of a smooth, uninterested statement.

"It's raining."

At his answer, the long-haired girl smiled to him the rarest, **honest** smile, and nodded in gratitude. They were both silent after that.

Akane didn't say another word as she tried to hear the distant rain. She **yearned** for it. She longed to hear something other than the _filthy_ silence and the _disgusting_ laughter and the _**maddening**_ whispers in her head. She remembered the soft sound of raindrops stroking the leaves and she could at least _pretend_ that she heard it as well.

And so they were both quiet, listening to the imaginary rain. It was merely herself and Sasuke and their autumn requiem. The hazy fog Akane's mind seemed wrapped around in nowadays prevented her from thinking of anything other than backwashed words and old distant thoughts that liked to dance in repeated steps of equally old traditional prompts.

_Soon, _she closed her eyes and wished._  
_

_Please, let it be soon._

* * *

"I wish to see the sun," she declared to the little flame.

The candle remained reserved once again, as if insulted.

_I know that I wish for too many things._

_I know._

_But right now, I just want to see some sunlight._

The next time she saw Kabuto she asked him for a few pieces of paper and some ink. The medic dropped his air of smug apathy long enough to raise a single eyebrow at Akane, but said nothing. He indeed brought her the requested equipment the next day, and so the girl began to draw.

It was not the most proper circle she had ever drawn, but she figured it would have to do. Several wavy black lines were scribbled around it, messy and smeared around the edges of the paper.

It was perfect.

Pleased with her work, Akane put it away and started another…

* * *

"Tape?"

"Yes."

"And what do you need it for, may I ask?"

The way he asked the question sounded like he suspected her to use it for something stupid. Like kill herself.

…not that the thought never occurred to her, but seriously now… with a tape?

"Well, I _do_ need to hang up these somehow," she waved a small bunch of paper in front of his nose for better emphasis. The medic's keen eyes caught sight of the drawing and raised another bloodless eyebrow at her. The corner of his lips twitched.

"Why of course."

* * *

Akane stared at the newborn sun on the opposite wall of her room. She placed it above the burning candle, letting it catch its glow.

That way her sun could burn too. That way she could pretend that it was just as warm, just as bright, just as… _real, _as the one in the living world.

But the flower she drew didn't smell like the real one did, the butterfly spreading its wings on the wall wasn't as colorful as the real one should be, and the scribble that was _supposed to_ represent a dog, but was masterfully disfigured by Akane's lack of talent, only stared densely back at her.

Akane leaned back into her bed and closed her eyes, wishing, wanting, and dreaming of a distant purple sky and a yellow meadow… both sprinkled with thin, papery ashes.

* * *

The next morning, the girl told Orochimaru about two figures dressed in black coats with red clouds, traveling across a bright desert.

The golden-eyed man smiled knowingly.

* * *

**Translation: Dum spiro, spero- While I breathe, I hope.**

***Iromuji is a traditional kimono that is one solid color with no designs/pictures on it. It is usually worn in tea ceremonies or slightly more formal events.**

****Obi is a sash for Japanese kimono or other formal dresses.**

***** Ichiju-sansai is the simplest and most common Japanese meal. Ichiju means one bowl of soup, and sansai is three dishes – 1 main and 2 side each in its own container. The main dish is normally fish or meat, and the sides are often vegetables. Ichiju-sansai is served with a bowl of rice (of course).**

* * *

**A/N: I'm dying to know what you think about 'Sasuke and Akane' moments. Was he OOC? Their seemingly uninformative and ordinary conversations are the products of their personal inner turmoils, as well as their awkward relationship. I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed writing Sasuke, which is more than a little weird- I've never liked him very much…**

**Any particular scene/line you liked/disliked? Leave a review, please. ;)  
**


	18. Hominem quaero

**Chapter eighteen:**

**Hominem quaero**

**A/N: Before you ask anything, no, I didn't die. School is killing me, painfully and slowly, and it really IS to blame for my lack of updates, but I'm still thankfully alive and kicking. And so I bring you the eighteenth chapter. It's long, it's suspenseful, creepy as hell, and not for the weak-hearted. You have been warned.**

* * *

_Damn him. Damn him to bloody hell._

She had tried everything. _Everything!_ And she still couldn't get the key from the medic. The whole plan depended on that _tiny little detail_ and no matter what she did she just couldn't get her hands on it! It was frustrating really. After concluding that Kabuto was right-handed, she had gambled with the thought that the key was probably in his right pocket. She'd heard it jingle.

Freaking. **_Jingle_.**

But no. The stupid guy just couldn't let her pickpocket him in peace. Oh, he noticed, of course. He also made quite a few offhanded remarks, accompanied by that awful smirk, ('_Why are you trying to get your hand into my pants, Akane-san?'_) embarrassing her to the fullest extent and all the while causing her to cringe in disgust.

Naturally, she never tried to do it again.

However, the most frustrating thing about it all was how little she knew of the enigmatic medic. She didn't know much about his past, or his present motives, or about his future either. All she knew was that he was the son of a leader of the Konoha's medic squad, that he claimed that he 'sympathized with Orochimaru's goals' and that he was going to inject the Sannin's DNA into himself and disappear. She needed to know _more._ She felt _powerless _when rendered of her knowledge, the only useful ability of hers in this damn world.

Oh, but Kabuto was just starting to get talkative. Akane learned that he was quite a chatty little fellow compared to the other two.

God, she **hated** him the most.

The medic may have talked nonstop, but he spoke selectively and revealed nothing. He carefully chose each word, minding himself just enough to prattle about things that were of no use to her. His each word sounded like an insult to her, even though she knew he didn't always mean it as such. But she smiled, and replied, and called him 'Kabuto-san', and stabbed him repeatedly in her mind for making her play his horrible mind-games.

"This false civility is getting on my nerves," he had drawled once, unexpectedly, tone suspiciously bored.

_(A game, a game, just another game we're playing at…)_

Akane tuned in with him, not hesitating for a moment, her voice gentle and disgustingly polite. "I do not know what that is of which you speak," she retorted, appearing happily ignorant of his remark.

(_You can't let yourself be stripped of your silky garment of speech; there's a child beneath it, clutching it in sweaty fingers; hiding from __**monsters**_).

Kabuto nodded and smiled all the while. Akane was proud that she didn't fall for the same taunts usually performed, and she thought that the medic might have looked slightly disappointed. She had learned well.

Deceit was a second nature to her now, too.

* * *

_Soon._

_Just a little more._

_Please, let it be soon._

* * *

"Why won't you tell me about your plan?"

There were no signs of tears on Hana's face, she noticed. No bags under the girl's eyes to indicate the lack of sleep. It might have been a bit odd, but Akane was glad nonetheless.

"No can do. Be patient. You know I can't tell you. Just trust me, alright?"

Annoyance was evident on Hana's face (…_Anger? No, that's not possible…_), but once again she dropped the subject. Silence hung in the unfriendly air of the dungeon. Cold. Wet. Akane shifted in her spot a few times before she had had enough and left. She had another 'prophecy' to share.

She had another lie to tell.

* * *

_A few more days._

_Stay sane._

_Just a few more days._

* * *

The girl shuddered. Looking Orochimaru into the eyes made her muscles clench in fright, even though she suspected that his wrath wasn't directed at her. His sickeningly golden eyes were narrowed into slits in a deadly glare at a Sound shinobi, who was bowing all the way to the floor near where she was standing.

"You should leave, Akane-san," Kabuto was the first to acknowledge her upon entering, before the other two turned to face her as well. A strange scene greeted her when she came that morning to tell another 'vision' to the Sannin (about Sasori's techniques, she chose this time), but from the tense air of his chamber she knew that something was definitely off.

"W-What's happening here?" she asked, failing to suppress the anxiety out of her voice as she neared the bowing ninja. With a startle, she realized that the man's frame was much too small and lean. The blue eyes peering at her from beneath his brown bangs were wide and undoubtedly youthful behind all the horror.

It was just _a boy_. Younger than her, obviously. Maybe he was Sasuke's age. Hana's even.

Shocked, her look came back to the other two when Orochimaru spoke in a sweet patronizing tone that clashed morbidly with the killing intent in his eyes.

"This boy was just telling us about his _brilliantly_ successful mission," his words dripped with cool slippery sarcasm, so unfitting for the tone he was using, "Why don't you repeat what you just said, so Akane-chan too, can enjoy your heroics?"

_This is bad, _Akane felt thoughts running through her head through her head at a feverish pace, _Something bad is going to happen._

The boy in question was shaking so terribly that Akane thought that he was on the verge of fainting. His breaths came short, forced and rapid; his hair was moistened from cold sweat and sticking all over his face. Terrified eyes, dilated from fear, darted aimlessly around the chamber.

"W-We spre-spread out… when t-the att-ttack started," his blabber was so incoherent Akane had a hard time keeping up, "We got it… got o-one scroll but… but…" The boy smashed his palms against the floor, shaking his head. "It w-wasn't our fault, Orochimaru-sama, you have to believe me!" his crazed screech was the only fluent sentence and to the boy's shock, it sounded more like a command.

The Snake Sannin's brows lowered over his eyes.

"P-please… The team captain Akira," the young ninja was looking somewhere above Orochimaru's head, eyes glassed with panic, "he—he was captured by the Sand's official, Orochimaru-sama… while trying to ge-get the other-"

"So you couldn't get the other forbidden scroll," Orochimaru offered, kindly helping him with his words, "That's understandable. All the guards must have been extra careful with the ongoing attack. Isn't that what you were trying to say, boy?"

That's when it all became clear to Akane. _Orochimaru had ordered his minions to steal some valuable forbidden jutsu from Sand while the Akatsuki were distracting the guards!_

The only reason Akane had told him about the attack was because she knew that the Sannin wasn't interested in conquering random villages, and neither did he have the needed shinobi force. She had needed to gain his utmost trust if she wished for her plan to work in the future, so it had seemed like a good idea to share the information with him at the time. She should have guessed that Orochimaru would still find a use for her little prediction. She looked over to the small ninja on the floor.

The boy didn't even realize how pathetic and ridiculous he looked as he nodded his head hysterically. Her heart stopped. Akane couldn't stand to look at his hopeful face and not get sick. For she knew that all Orochimaru was doing was playing with him.

"Yes! Yes, Orochimaru-sama," the Sound ninja nodded his head up and down, missing the way the older man murderously eyed his neck, "We-We really didn't think-"

"I know. I know you didn't."

The naïve smile on the boy's face was painful, too painful to watch. There was a discreet smirk on Kabuto's face and suddenly, Akane felt extremely nauseous. She knew what was coming even without her so called gift.

_Please don't, please don't, please, please, please…_

"It would be a shame to cause bloodshed for such a small… mistake, isn't it?" Orochimaru smiled a vicious grin, wrongly interpreted by the boy as he continued to nod his head in the same rhythm as Akane's chanting.

_Please, please, please…_

"A mistake! Yes, Orochimaru-sama, we-"

"After all, you should be rewarded for your hard work. And what a better reward than granting you to be of use to me even in your death! Don't you agree, my faithful little servant?" he asked the smiling boy whose face instantly froze.

Eyes widening-

_I won't let you die._

Mouth parting—

_He's just a boy…_

A helpless, throaty sound-

"No."

Akane spread her arm's protectively in front of the panicking boy as she stepped between him and his master. She had no idea what she was doing, but she was surprised over the fact that she wasn't shaking in the slightest. While her thoughts were chaotic, pale, hazy, her composure was straight, strong and determined.

Orochimaru's leering smile widened, "Now, now, Akane-chan. You wouldn't want Kabuto to miss his opportunity to get an unscarred corpse. He's been running short of the sixteen-year-old ones, you see."

She dug her heels more into the ground, "I won't let you hurt him." Her green eyes reflecting the mad gleam from the Snake's eyes as they stared each other down in their silent battle of wills.

Both Kabuto and the boy were observing them now, but she didn't dare to avert her look from Orochimaru's. Because there was no amusement lacing his words or eyes.

She was truly in danger this time.

And Akane felt empty. Empty and stupid, but she didn't care- she just couldn't bear to watch a child die.

Orochimaru's eyes slashed at her. "It would be wise of you to move, my dear. You're acting uncharacteristically stupid. Do you really think," he laughed at her and her fists clenched at the sides, "Do you really think that you can _save_ him? My, what adorable optimism!"

"I won't let you hurt him," she repeated, voice stern and unwavering. Eyes steely. Chin high. Defiant.

_(Never again, never again, never again…)_

"Akane-san!" Kabuto's voice rang, a warning being its obvious intention.

However... "You should move, child," Orochimaru's low hiss carried the note of a promising threat. And yet…

"No." _Sweetness spreading through her mouth._

She realized how sick she was of it. All of it. She was sick of pretending to be stupid, she was sick of pretending to be nice, she was sick of pretending to be compliant to these _imaginary_, insane idiots who dared to boss her around. She was sick of Orochimaru-_sama_ and his orders.

(_Never again.)_

"Move, girl!"

"NO!" A monstrous silence swallowed the room after her shout.

Heavy.

Overbearing.

Hurtful.

Those inhuman golden eyes were hurtful to look at. They wanted blood, pain, they demanded _obedience_. "Do you defy me?"

There was a moment's silence before he was afforded Akane's breathless reply. "... I do."

Obedience that she would. **not.** give.

And that's when she crossed the line.

"Get out."

...

...

...

Akane blinked, confused. Her cloudy brain couldn't keep up with all that was happening and wasn't able to decipher at to whom was the order had been cast. Only when another voice spoke up did she understand what was going on. That's when she felt her blood go cold.

"Orochimaru-sama, you shouldn't—We still need her-"

"I said out, Kabuto!" the Sannin barked at the medic and Akane cringed. She had never heard Orochimaru raise his voice before. The tingly sense of fear overflowed her gut. She bit her cheek hard enough to taste the coppery tang of blood, struggling to keep up her subterfuge.

Kabuto gave her one quick look (_was it pity?_) before he shifted and left the room without another protest. Akane counted his long steps, briefly wondering if he was intentionally being so slow about it. The sharp 'thump' of the door echoed throughout the room like an axe on the soft neck of the condemned.

Everything happened so fast.

A glitter of steel. There was a slash of the blade, followed by a sound of something squishy and gooey splashing on the floor behind her and a sensation of warm liquid sprinkling her back and neck. A strangled noise reached her ears as she began to turn around to the boy when—

Orochimaru had closed the distance between them faster than Akane could have ever imagined.

Before she knew what was happening, he had twisted her arm behind her back, eliciting a shocked hiss of pain; the breath died in her throat as his other hand shot out, entwining in her scalp and grabbing a fistful of her hair, and in the next moment she was shoved against a far away wall.

The girl smashed her head against the stone and stars flashed in her sight. They were bright and yellow, and they transformed into two furious snake eyes only inches from her face. Akane flinched and struggled, trying to wrench her hands which were trapped between her back and the wall, both of them clenched in one pale iron grip. Cold stone scratched and bit at her skin through the thin layers of kimono. The eighteen-year-old quickly stopped in her squirming when she realized that it only brought her pain.

"I may have overestimated your intelligence, little one," she was both surprised and frightened at how close his voice was next to her ear; tense and raspy and intimately dark, "I actually believed you would have learned your place by now. You should have watched that sharp tongue of yours: contrarily to your personal belief, you are far, far _beneath_ me."

Akane couldn't see anything but the man's torso, a curtain of his black hair blocking her eyesight. A spark of anger erupted in her chest, and against her better judgment, it also manifested itself on the tip of her tongue.

(_Reveal **the snake** for what it truly is!_)

"Then thank you, Orochimaru-san, for bringing me back down to my place. Now I can see what slithers and crawls on the ground more easily," she hissed and held back a shriek when his grip on her hands intensified. _Pain._ In the next moment, an air of relief washed over her when his hand untangled from her burning scalp, but then he brought it up to her face. She closed her eyes instinctively, waiting for the blow.

. . .

It never came. The next thing she knew was that Orochimaru's fingers were on her cheek, tracing invisible patterns on her skin.

An insane shudder, impulsive like a spasm, twisted her whole body. But not because the touch felt strange or corpse-like... but rather because the man's paradoxically delicate fingers were strangely warm and human. A man this insane, this inhumane, this _monstrous_ should have somehow conveyed his evil to his skin… but he didn't.

_There is nothing to be afraid of_, she convinced herself over and over in her head,_ He needs me. He wouldn't hurt me._

(_Then __**why**__ are you shaking so much?)_

The silken, gentle touch on her cheek made her want to vomit. The Snake Sannin's thin lips were once more curled into a malicious smirk. Even after her insulting him insult, he still managed to throw her off by chuckling in that deep, hoarse voice of his, "You are indeed a remarkable case. A peasant girl with little ties to the forgotten village, with knowledge of the most intriguing things in the shinobi world through mere dream—it's all a little oddly convenient, don't you think?"

... Akane stilled, waiting with baited breath for his next words. She suspected the direction his speech was heading toward and she didn't like it, no, not at all. In the next moment, she felt him release her hands from behind her back but then he pinned beside her head.

"Almost_ too_ convenient. You also recognized the sharingan and addressed Sasuke-kun as an Uchiha, although _I_ have never mentioned it. The Uchiha clan may have been well-known many years ago, but for a young civilian girl from an uneducated, dying village to connect such a thing…" he trailed off, "Well… I think you see my point."

Orochimaru turned her hands so that her palms were facing up, and inspected them with a calculating gaze like one would an old map, "Your hands were dirty, mud collected under your nails, flesh scarred. A worker's hands, fitting perfectly with your story, one would say..."

He started to tenderly trail his thumb down her small wrist, "But. Under the most superficial layer of skin, the fingers of your arm are beautifully long and too _frail_. The hands of an artist. The slender bone of your wrist is too fine and _weak_. So you understand, my dear, how these seemingly trivial details just._ don't._ **_fit._**"

The rising flood in her stomach abruptly caught on fire; not another thought, and Aane was losing control over herself, starting to panic. The doubt that Orochimaru could see under the remnants of her peasant life, and see who she actually had been, burned and ate her from the inside like forest-fire.

Much to her relief, she managed to keep her face completely straight- a perfect mask of ignorance only for display. Her voice had failed her and she was sure that she wouldn't be able to produce a _squeak_ even if her life depended on it. It was as if every function of her body was flickering away and dying before him, leaving her numb and useless. The dark-haired man leaned to the side of her face and the girl was overwhelmed by the heavy smell of wax with a sweetish tint of unknown herbs.

"You should be careful," Orochimaru whispered in her ear, "I might start to believe you're hiding something from me."

His hand was still stroking her neck and it terrified her, all of it, the revelation how stupid she was, how silly, how _amusin_g for him to watch and analyze and play with. The thought that she was always one, not step, but _leap_ behind.

"Another little _mistake_ on your part," he continued, his words no more than a breath, "and I'll have to punish you for your insolence. You are very precious to me Akane-chan. But, all good things come to an end, and I would _hate_ it if you made me bring you to yours so soon… Bear this in mind, my bird- I won't be as _merciful_ as I was to my toy over there."

She.., she couldn't believe what madness she was hearing! He expected her to take _that_ as an act of mercy?!

Orochimaru released his hold on her and the girl immediately took her pulsating hand in her other one. The man snickered at her reaction and she collected the last of her energy into one fiery glare aimed up at him. He met it risibly, with a broad amused grin and a few mockingly affectionate words as he stepped away from her.

"So naive... Doesn't this all make you want to laugh, lovely?"

He was smiling when he began to walk away, stepping over the corpse like any other object. His words echoed throughout the room, cutting themselves into her mind, making her more nauseous than ever.

"_Doesn't it make you want to _laugh_?"_

As soon as the man pulled back completely, Akane's legs gave out beneath her and she crumpled to the ground in a heap.

After a few moments of stupor, the girl remembered how to breathe and started to gulp down air through her dry mouth. Orochimaru had already left the room to her great relief and she just sat there, too tired to raise her look from her knees. She felt strangely empty, not even scared, and that was what worried her the most. She watched, uninterested, as her wrist turned a faint purple color. Her head hurt, so did her heart. If Akane hadn't known better, she would've been quite sure that it was located in her throat, and not the rib-cage.

Still feeling dizzy, the soothsayer brought up her gaze and stared at the body some distance from her. A shell of a boy lay on the floor, like a colorful broken doll. She thought she saw a deep cut, going all the way from his chest down, diagonally, over his stomach to the beginning of his leg. She wasn't sure though. It was quite a mess, she thought, with all the red and those wet ropes pilled up all over him and the floor.

The ropes looked really slimy too. Very fleshy.

. . .

…until she realized that those weren't ropes at all.

Without another thought, Akane puked all over the floor.

* * *

The eighteen-year-old concluded that Sasuke had the most annoying habit of showing up whenever she wanted his oh-so-cheerful company at least five miles away from her. She had just left the room, careful not to step into the bloody contents of the dead boy's stomach, and was crawling up the hallway to her room. She had just decided never to leave it again. Of course, like some bad karma, the Uchiha-avenger met her half-way in one of those tedious, dimly-lit halls. It was _almost_ as if he had been searching for her.

It wasn't a big deal. Initially. She counted on the boy's 'friendly' personality and 'excelent' sense of judgment, and thought that he would just ignore her. Or maybe, it was rather she had hoped. That's why it took her almost three full-blown minutes to process the information that his hand was on her throat, squeezing her air pipes to mush, and that she was once again in the deadly position with her back against the wall.

"Tell me about the Akatsuki."

Akane brought her exhausted eyes up to meet his and grudgingly hoped that the guy appreciated the effort. But she couldn't tell, although she seriously doubted it. She was too caught up with two blazing red orbs trying to scorch her eyes out with their furious glares. _Isn't he one for pleasantries…_

"Good day to you too, Uchiha-san."

Obviously, Sasuke wasn't in the mood. His fingers pressed harshly on her neck, bringing her to the edge of choking.

"You know about Itachi," he stated tonelessly, his hand never leaving her larynx,"Where is he? What are his current actions?" His smooth voice darkened dangerously. "Answer me."

If Akane had had any juice left in her, she would've probably been very angry. She was sure that Sasuke had seen the blue bruises on her wrists. In her fragile state of mind, she wanted to call him an insensitive brat. But, as the situation was, she only lightly tapped his hand, as to show him that she couldn't breathe. His dark eyebrows narrowed and, even if he looked like he would have had nothing against leaving his hand lingering there another moment or two, he complied.

Akane's heels safely touched the ground and she leaned her head back against the wall.

"You want me… to tell you…" a cough, "what Itachi is doing?"

Sasuke nodded his head, beautiful black hair covering his eyes. It was in that moment that Akane realized two completely random things. First, how weird it was that Sasuke was two years younger than her, when they'd been the same age the last time she'd watched him in the anime. The thought was quite unsettling. And the second, a scandalous revelation for her, that viewed-up close the boy really did have the prettiest face she had ever seen. And compared to her earlier trauma with Orochimaru, he didn't really strike her as _intimidating_ at all. On the contrary. He looked stoic, but at the same time more at peace with her willing cooperation.

And then she realized that she **wanted** to make him angry, that she **needed **to see his eyes flaming, **screaming,** burning with emotion, to make them **anything** but the apathetic blades she had come to know them as. To make his eyes widen, widen and search, scanning… and come up empty. Empty, because there was nothing to see.

Akane was so _desperate _to see another human**.**

"He has just taken a breath," she finally replied and the sound of her own voice surprised her.

It was far too cold to belong to a living person.

"And another one… And another…" she continued in a sing-song voice, watching his jaw tightened. The thought that she could elicit such a strong reaction, that her words held such power over him… it gave her… _satisfaction_.

That one sentence, the reminder that **he's** (_still_) alive, lungs intact and blood preserved, was enough to make Sasuke's eyes bleed red. Instantly, he drew his sword and in one swift movement pressed its cold edge to her throat. For the very first time since they met, Akane saw Sasuke's lips curled into a snarl, dark expression suddenly violent.

"You will tell me-"

She chuckled, as if not anxious in the least, "Will you kill me, Uchiha-san?"

The blade of his katana pressed more against her neck. A warning. He leaned in more toward her in a highly threatening gesture, a fragrance of spicy ashes and fresh pines washing over her senses, but to Akane in that moment, it all just seemed unexplainably silly.

"There is only one person I truly wish to kill," his voice was a low growl as he spoke, "But if you don't tell me about him, I promise, your blood will be the first to stain my sword-"

"What are you talking about?" she asked, lazily, like she was merely chatting with him in the kitchen and not being threatened decapitation by his hand. "Look at it! Just look at your blade."

To her amusement, his eyes paid it a small glance.

"Don't you see it? So much red… There's so much blood, and tears, and sweat. Your sword, your hands are stained with so much _life_ of Naruto, of Sakura, of all those _idiotic_ people who can still find enough _hope_ to treasure the sole memory of yo-"

"Shut up."

_With his jaw clenched like this_, Akane thought, _Sasuke almost looks like he's pouting._ Splashing away her thoughts, she addressed him again, fearless, tone scolding, "You are such a _child_, hiding behind those hollow eyes of yours."

"And what are you then?" he returned her statement, bitter words leaking through the fresh crack of the mask.

Akane's smirk faded away.

At his unexpected question, her whole being suddenly became stiff. Her face could have easily passed as one of a porcelain doll: hauntingly pretty under the candlelight, but cold and emotionless and therefore severely flawed. She shifted her downcast eyes to him, and their angry gazes met. One hollow, and red, and black, and the other brown, and green, and just as hollow, beneath the cloudy veil of haze. And then she opened herself up to him, not caring at all that he couldn't understand her, not caring that her voice seemed to blur at the edges and break against the walls.

Empty and not caring about anything in the world.

"I… I don't know," she replied, her tone ice-cold. "I don't know… and that's terrifying me more than your sword's blade, Kabuto's taunts or Orochimaru's trickery ever could. Because _Akane_ is here, Uchiha-san, but _I_ am nowhere to be found anymore."

Sasuke regarded her words with indifference. His scarlet eyes never left hers, as if he were trying to stare her into submission. He had just opened his mouth to speak again when a well known voice intersected him.

"If Orochimaru-sama himself hadn't killed her yet, it must mean that he still has some use of her. Also, I myself would be quite annoyed if I had to clean up another corpse today, Sasuke-kun."

Both of them paused in their glaring-contest to look at the white-haired medic, lazily leaning against the wall. His round glasses sparked with a rather mischievous glint and she had to wonder if he was actually enjoying seeing her like this, stretched against the wall and threatened. Sasuke's blade was still ever-so-comfortably under her neck, and so she stood on the tips of her fingers very, very still.

"I don't care," the avenger finally spoke, and Akane found it almost comical how much unadulterated anger such simple three words could carry. She wasn't _mad_ at Sasuke, no, she felt too apathetic for something like that. As crazy as it sounded, she was partially _happy_ that he had shown her what she had wanted to see so badly.

That she wasn't the only one. That he was human, too.

The medic only sighed, "As you wish. But remember, Sasuke-kun: dead people don't talk... and Akane-san isn't going anywhere any time soon."

When he was sure that the Uchiha understood his words, Kabuto began to walk away. A few seconds of mutual silence.

And then, Sasuke retracted his katana into its fold. He didn't look happy about it, seeing as patience was not a virtue he could claim to possess, and Akane was sure that their little chit-chat wasn't over quite yet. As soon as her feet touched the floor, the eighteen-year-old started to straighten her kimono and brush away particles of dust. She was extra careful to make her movements as nonchalant as ever. Sasuke stood besides her, watching her hawkishly, and she couldn't help but smirk at him.

"Have a nice day, Uchiha-san."

A turn of his back. "Hn."

And with that, they parted ways.

* * *

Soon after their awkward, unpleasant exchange in the halls, Sasuke had once again vanished from the hideout. At least, that was Akane's opinion. She spent hours in her room, counting the cracks in the walls and wondering how much it would take for those seemingly strong walls to collapse. And then she decided that she wouldn't let them collapse, no, as long as she lives, she would never let them.

_I can't let myself collapse because of a few cracks._

In the way a man's body weakens after a great sprint, the frantic happenings of that week had caused Akane's brain to feel beaten and drained. With no other motivation but the vague recollection that she could not afford to relax, she revived her brain from its stupor and forced it to work.

Still, she found herself looking at her situation with a rather detached mentality, as if she were watching someone else. The will to escape was still present, but the adrenaline to do so was mostly gone. Instead, she watched and wondered. Hopefully her calm demeanor would help her review all her options more objectively.

Akane decided that, even when her intelligence failed her, her will would not. She was HUMAN (_a cruel fact she was repeatedly reminded of_) and she had to extract every single drop of that nectar to keep on going.

"Don't let them beat you, you're not helpless," she encouraged herself, "As long as you can think, and feel, you are not helpless."

_We are going to leave this place. Soon. Just a few more days. _The thoughts were present less and less in her mind. It wasn't as if she was letting stress get to her – the audacity of such a suggestion - but the fact still remained.

She would not allow herself to be beaten.

* * *

**Translation: I am looking for a human.** **(When asked why he was carrying a candle in the middle of the day at the square, Diogenes answered this, that he was in search of an honest man, as to show the corruption of the Athens and its people)**

**A/N: I'm most interested in what you felt while reading this chapter. Also, what did it make you think about? Any fave lines? Click the little review button down there and let me know.**


	19. Sapienti sat

**Chapter nineteen:**

**Sapienti sat**

**A/N: This is just a little bonus chapter till I get around to writing the next one. Since so many reviewers liked my way of portraying Orochimaru, I wrote one short-ish bonus chapter with only him and Akane. The reason this chapie is a filler is because it's written differently than the other chapter, i.e. I wrote it in two POVs, and not only Akane's as it is in the original story. So enjoy it people, as this is the last long scene with the Snake Sannin I will be writing. I suggest reading through it extra slowly and reading between the lines…**

**I also wanted to reply to my first two anonymous reviewers ever!**

**To fellow-fanfic-reader: Haha, well the genre IS suspense after all, and I guess I just like to leave you people guessing. xD Also, I'm glad that you like the fact that this fic isn't centered around romantic couples. I know that most people on this site read stories mainly because of those. -_- Thanks for the review!**

**To Tipsy: Aky? Akane got a nickname! xD Anyway, close, but not close enough. ;) Thanks for the interesting suggestion!**

* * *

It was pretty hilarious, she decided. For once, she would have never thought that his face was able to make an 'are-you-kidding-me' look.

"Akane-chan," she grit her teeth at the provoking suffix, "It was rather obvious that **that** was a trap."

She watched dispassionately as his white hand moved his figure and removed her bishop from the board. She had just given a bishop for his pawn. She'd got quite plenty of those. The snake charmer had no qualms about getting themsacrificed for her precious pieces.

And she fell for it every time.

The girl shrugged her shoulders casually at the loss and once again her thin hand was on the Queen. Orochimaru watched with detached interest as she moved the figure across the chessboard and took yet another of his pawns. He was curious, although he kept his face carefully blank. What in the world did she think she was doing?

"Your… strategy," he settled for pointing out teasingly, "is quite an eye-catcher, but, as you have surely noticed, rather inefficient".

Greenish eyes shot up to meet his serpentine gaze. The Snake Sannin laughed inwardly at how effortlessly easy she was to read. Even though she tried (_relatively well for a civilian, he admitted_) to hide her body language and facial expressions, it was in her eyes… a palette of warm colors that revealed the true intensity of her feelings.

As if she had grasped his trail of thoughts, the eighteen-year-old promptly averted her look from his prying one. "It's efficient enough," she responded in a flat voice.

Too late. He saw it. The discomfort at his words. A hint of desperation.

_Wonderful._ His long tongue slipped from his mouth and licked his lips in satisfaction, like a snake tasting the air for sweet fear.

_

* * *

My 'strategy'? It would seem he noticed…_ She glanced back up at him just in time to see a tip of his tongue disappearing into the mouth, only to have his lips form that irritating smirk. She suppressed a shiver, a light jerk of her muscles she had become so accustomed to.

_Figures._

As he had stated a moment earlier, her 'strategy' was quite unique… because it wasn't one. Since the beginning of this glorious game of theirs, she had never been going for the victory after all. She knew she couldn't win against the likes of him (for he hadn't been called 'the genius of Konoha' for nothing), but she would practice the only thing she was admittedly good at:

Prolonging time.

Akane remembered she had been suspicious the moment they'd started their routine conversation that morning. Both of them acted like nothing had happened, but the tension that had been breathing down her neck since that dreadful incident a few days ago had still been ever-so-present, and it took her tremendous amounts of energy just to keep it caged. Usually she would talk, and he would listen, and then she would retire to her room for the rest of the day. It was as simple as that. But this morning…

* * *

"Akane-chan," he called out to her silkily as he piled some dusty old boxes, making her stop dead in her tracks, "it had recently come to my attention that you seem quite… _restless,_ so to say".

If by 'restless' he meant 'bored out of her wits', she absolutely agreed. Drawing pictures in the dirt the whole day can only entertain one for so long…

"I know I don't seem to have much time," he apologized, tone mock-innocent, "however, in this moment I am available to spare a few moments for you."

_Oh, shucks, stop it, my ears are bleeding,_ a small sarcastic voice purred inwardly. Seriously, what did she do to give him an impression that she wanted his high-and-mighty company? Outwardly, she smiled as pleasantly as she could and was about to retort when he continued.

"Do you know what this is, my girl?" he questioned and gesticulated to the rectangular box he was cradling in his arms. Old, dusty and checkered. It didn't take her long to analyze the object.

…_Chess?_

_(O.o)_

Sensing his impatience at her lack of response, she quickly nodded her head. Orochimaru didn't make small talk. **That** she was certain of. Because of this little fact she suspected some fiendish plot and evil-doing the moment he had spoken to her. But come on… **chess**?

"I am aware that it's a game for the intelligent and the witted, but I was still wondering if you would be willing to play?" he laughed briefly, "Of course, I will understand if you decline my offer…"

Wait.

Did he just call her stupid? Did he just indirectly insult her and think he could get away with it? Was he intentionally daring her to refuse?

The_ nerve._

Her eyebrow twitched dangerously. But, just like every previous time she had found herself in a rather displeasing situation, her defensive reaction was but yet another disarming, amiable smile. He returned her smile with his own predatory grin and placed the board on the table, taking one luxurious seat.

"Well then, shall we?"

_Oh, the bastard is going down._

* * *

She was taking the defensive again. Obvious enough, he concluded. Her whole game was in defending her King with a few pathetic offensive trips to his pawns. He was left with only a few of them but… they served their purpose. _This girl-_

…smooth hand grasped the Queen tightly and, almost ruthlessly, crashed against his pawn…

_-is playing with only one figure:_

_The Queen._

To say that Orochimaru was intrigued would be an understatement. The girl played the game with only one piece, thoroughly forgetting about the others. From the very beginning it was obvious to him that she was a poor player, not even a challenge. If he had wished so, he could have finished the game a long time ago.

He didn't.

At first he was irritated: the fool had no talent whatsoever, apparently no strategy and no interest on what was happening on the field beside her two precious figures. She fell for the obvious, stayed mute when in a tight spot and to top it all off, seemed to care little about seizing his King.

He continued the game, patiently waiting and observing, for he was experienced enough to know that there was more to this weak little girl than met the eye: the previous few months were enough of a guarantee.

Surprisingly, he caught himself rather enjoying the game now. While Akane was by far the worst chess player he'd ever met, she was a formidable opponent in the game of wits, even when so annoyingly silent.

And so they played…

* * *

She was getting pissed off. He was enjoying this, toying with her, the bloody bastard. She kept her emotionless façade, but her hand gripped the figure a little bit too rough. He saw it (_and how wouldn't he, when he had been eyeing her creepily this whole time_) and his face split into that unnaturally sharp grin again. Oh, how she hated him.

She had just lost another of the pretty important figures.

"How long are you planning to keep me waiting?" she finally spoke, completely deaf to her mind's warning that would have otherwise kept her silent, "Do you find such _pleasure_ in slowly taking my army? Please, do take them all, just hurry it up!"

The long-haired girl expected a frown to form on his forehead and possibly a long-awaited punishment for her arrogance, but instead his grin widened more (_if that was even humanly possible_) and he laughed.

Her eyes almost popped out from their sockets with surprise. Akane stared at the dark-haired man incredulously, for it was unexpected to hear laughter of Orochimaru's so rid of malice and mockery. It sounded almost… good natured.

It scared the shit out of her like never before.

"Dear girl," he spoke as his strange laughter subsided, "I would have never thought us this similar…"

If she knew how, she would have totally lifted an eyebrow.

"What a cruel being you truly are. I find your apparent eagerness to sacrifice _all_ of the weaker pieces for a greater purpose quite enchanting," he leaned towards her, "Why, I believe you've surpassed even me in severity, my dear."

The meaning of his words made her hold in a lungful of tickling air.

…_He did not just imply that. _

"Ah Orochimaru-san," she manipulated her voice into a sweet chirp, soft as a bird's song and sharp as its beak, "I do believe that is an impossible feat to accomplish". She picked up her Queen and inspected the piece closely, swaying it gently between her thumb and her index finger.

"You see, on my side of the board, there really are no others. Only the King and his guardian. There are no other pieces," she finished, her voice cracking at the end with an emotion akin to sadness. She watched as his reptilian eyes lit up with acknowledgement and knew he understood her words perfectly.

* * *

And he did.

The King, a pathetic figure really. It could only move as much as one square and had almost no offensive or defensive power, merely relying on its protectors. But, however weak it may be, it was still the most important piece in the game, the member everything revolved around.

The Queen, on the other hand, was the most powerful. The figurine was capable of impressive moving rate and was most suited for unexpected crises. Akane-chan was fond of the independent Queen and played with her just like that: independently.

Her hand picked the Queen once more and forced his lines back…

_Akane is the Queen._

Fighting and battling defiantly without a moment to spare. And the King…

He eyed the passive piece, lazily enveloped in a false, cozy blanket of security.

… was her little friend he had imprisoned. Hana, was it?

'_There are no other pieces…'_

She wasn't sacrificing her other figures. She already considered them **dead**. There was nobody else to protect the other imprisoned girl. So this whole time… the little Queen had been taking her sweet time?

How cute.

But… what if he…?

* * *

"Check," the smooth voice ringed and sickeningly golden eyes bored into her own.

_What the…? Is he done playing games?_ The girl puzzled over the sudden turn of events. The quick attack was too abrupt and her brain stopped for a moment in failure to contemplate the new situation.

_Check? But not check__mate__? What exactly is he…_ Akane snapped back from her daze and analyzed the board attentively when-

She took a sharp intake of breath. Yellow eyes gleamed sinisterly.

_The bastard._

Her King was situated in the very corner of the board. It was surrounded by other pieces that were effectively cutting off his escape route. She couldn't move him an inch. And there it was. Orochimaru's strongest figure, the black Queen, was hissing at her King threateningly from all across the board. She had nowhere to go.

_But how is it not a checkmate?_ She shifted her eyes to his hungry ones, trying to dig up the answer hidden under the glitters of fake gold. What was there left for her to do? What did **he** want her to do?

The solution composed before her eyes and she shook her head slowly in disbelief. The only way to save her King was to put a sacrifice before him for the black Queen to devour, and then take her with her King. Yes, that should work.

_As for the sacrificial figure, _she tried to compose herself and calmly strategize,_ Which piece should I-_

And then she realized she had almost none left. _Just when did he take them all?_ _All of my chances… _It was in that moment that she understood. The only solution he had left her with was to sacrifice her pride and joy, the Queen herself, to save the priority of the game.

To put herself as a human shield to protect Hana.

She knew by watching series that Orochimaru observed reality as a game. He ranged people by their worth and compared them to the figures. It was just a matter of time till he evaluated her and dragged her into his game. He knew who her King was, who was important to her. He'd been tauntingly waving at her with Hana dangling in front of her nose since their first encounter (_Ahh, the memories!_). So… he wanted to see how far she was willing to go?

_Is that so? _Her knuckles turned chalk-white as she clenched her fists in hot fury. He was asking her if she would give her own life for the other girl, wasn't he? He **dared **to doubt her resolve after all she had been through?

"My dear, do not look at me so," Orochimaru chided her softly after her glare turned expressively green with poison, "If the Queen finds the situation too hard to handle, she can always change the sides of the board…"

The equivalent to his implication made her jaw clench. _Join me completely. Obey me. Give up. Give in._

_(Never again.)_

The corners of her lips shaped a small tricky smile, "But Orochimaru-san, that is not how this game goes."

Elegant black brow rose.

"The Queen," she explained softly, as if to a small child, "must choose her side before the beginning of the game. Not after. Do you not remember? Just like you have chosen the black, and I have chosen the white."

_And white shall I remain, _she thought, forever persistent in her decisions. _White shall I embrace._

* * *

Orochimaru watched as the girl's fragile fingers hugged the white Queen and ceremonially put her in front of the King. Akane looked at the figure lovingly, as if saying goodbye. She would not betray her little friend, it seemed.

_No matter._

Then he would take her by force. He **would** bring her to her end.

**Down** to her knees.

He would corrupt her whiteness with his black, he **would** make her obey!

The black Queen, he himself! The most powerful creature on the black side of the board! The strongest, most dominant piece! The master of the whole game! The superior to the white Queen!

* * *

The clash of the two Queens echoed throughout the wide dark room. The only thing that remedied the deadly silence was the sharp thump of the defeated white Queen as she fell. Pale hand stretched and gripped it, long fingers clenching its curvy sides, before pulling it harshly to his side.

The girl took it all with empty green eyes, her head raised pridefully as she watched the man across from her gloat in his triumph. The Snake Sannin's words spoke of his so-called-pity towards her, and Akane found herself daydreaming of wrenching his poisonous tongue out of his throat. It was an image that thus far had kept her sanity in check; she'd become rather fond of plotting the snake's demise at her own hand.

"Now now, my lovely. Your King is still safe… for now," he cooed mercilessly, as he prepared for the continuation of his game.

"I'm not playing." The girl statement was followed by the screeching of her chair. A swish of an expensive, light kimono as she started to leave, and the tapping of her retreating steps—

"Stop."

She did.

"We haven't finished our game yet, Akane-chan," Orochimaru sluggishly motioned to the board crawling with black pieces, "Surely it is_ impolite_ to leave things unfinished."

The girl contemplated her reply for the longest ten seconds. _Breathe in… Breathe out… _She discreetly wiped the corners of her mouth with her hand, as if she were trying to wipe away the curse words that had almost escaped her lips. Then she stared into his amused eyes, trying not to spit out her polite reply, "I have no pieces left to play with. Besides, it's completely pointless playing with you."

The eighteen-year-old continued to the door in rigid, wooden steps and gripped its side tightly. The skin on the back of her neck prickled. She didn't like having her back turned to him. When no sound came from the very dangerous man behind her, she took his silence as an invitation to elaborate on her words. And so she spoke.

"Playing this game with you is quite unfair really," a dry chuckle scratched her throat, "For how can I play it with somebody who has no King of his own?"

She really didn't, not once, try to attack the black King. For she knew that such an action would be completely meaningless. Akane tilted her head over her shoulder just enough to make out the dissatisfied face of the serpent master. A spark of inner victory flashed in her dull eyes, outshining the playful glitter of fire and shadows.

"Congratulations, Orochimaru-san. You won your game."

The door closed behind her and she took a deep breath of triumph. She navigated her way to her room, feeling the unexplainable urge to skip and whistle and laugh along the way. Feeling lighter and **stronger** than ever. She'd shown him, her victory may have been a silent and inward one, but it had still been just that: a _victory_.

_And tomorrow… Tomorrow is __**my**__ time to attack._

With each breath she took, the air smelled more and more like rain.

**

* * *

Translation: Sapienti sat- A word is ****enough for the wise. (Indicates that something can be understood spoken with only a few words, without any need for explanation, as long as the listener has enough wisdom or common sense)**

**Color background (only for this bonus chapter): White- this color symbolizes purity, innocence and cleanliness. It aids mental clarity, encourages cleaning obstacles, enables purification of thoughts and enables fresh beginnings. **

**However, in Japan, it is also a color of mourning and death.**

**A/N: Ignore the smiley in the beginning of the chapter, I just couldn't resist. xD So if anything, review just to tell me how much you hated the chapter… :D**


	20. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam

**Chapter twenty:**

**Aut viam inveniam aut faciam**

**A/N: First, let me apologize for my dreadful updating skills, as a certain person would put it (you know who you are), and second, let me write down the reason (NOT excuse!) for this late update. The truth is, I haven't seen a computer in two weeks- I've been traveling a lot. Hey, it's summer, what can you expect?**

**IMPORTANT! For AkanexOrochimaru fans (it seems that there are quite a few out there) there is a story called 'Abyssus Abyssum Invocat' by a talented writer Kira-seven, also a fan of this pairing, you might enjoy. Feel free to check out this fanfic and reward Kira with a lengthy review. I want to thank her for such an honor- it is not everyday somebody writes a fanfic for your fanfic. xD You can find the story in my faves.**

* * *

Akane had only recently come to live with the fact that she really was rather ridiculously defenseless in her current predicament.

She couldn't get the key, much to her chagrin, which eliminated most of her plans of escape. Fortunately, Akane was the type of a person that more often than not had 'a backup plan for a backup plan', and so she briskly turned to her other options at hand. Millions of steps were paced across the small dark room, there was a lot of thwacking her head against the wall and, eventually, she came to a realization.

The only weapon that had worked thus far had been such a simple weapon, one that even she had not realized was being used as such:

_words._

Plain, clear words. Akane had learned how terrifying and cruel words could be, and not only because they made everything real. There was something of a dark magic in them. Only smoke and mirrors, yes, but words could give a false, plastic form to the most liquid and abstract of the things and, more importantly, could _sharpen_ the softest of them. In the world of words, Akane found that she had the power to bend others' thoughts and twist their visions to suit her tastes.

And so the sentence that left her lips had been chewed over many times in her head, carefully weighted on her tongue like sugar and tasted like the newly opened bottle of wine. The girl had to make sure that everything was absolutely perfect and had thus boiled her plan to seem expressively delicious. Her opponent was a dangerous one, and he was not inexperienced when it came to such dinner-parties. He knew when the wine was bitter and when awfully sweet.

"Kabuto-san is having a meeting with your old partner from the Akatsuki soon, is he not?"

Orochimaru halted with his chopsticks hovering millimeters in front of his mouth. Those golden, unsettling eyes paid her a sideways glance. He was wearing a faintly yellow kimono today, which made his already pale silhouette seem almost ghostly. His slightly risen eyebrows gave him a curious, a bit cunning look.

"Indeed," the chopsticks scratched the bottom of the bowl, "And I suppose you know something about it…?"

Bingo. He was hooked from the first sentence. _Good. This is good._ The smell of eggs filled her nostrils, making it hard to concentrate on the task at hand. Akane steadied her breathing. She couldn't let herself mess this up.

"I saw it all," she calmly began, "We were all on some bridge, and you attacked Sasori, who was in his puppet-"

"We?" Orochimaru interrupted. A note of suspicion was clear in his voice.

Akane tilted her head the tiniest bit to the side, as if baffled by his inquiry. Then she elaborated on her 'vision', careful to sound utterly confused. "…Well, Kabuto-san was holding Hana, and you were talking to the Akatsuki member… you were gesturing to me, so I _suppose_ I had something to do with it…"

The older man turned wholly to her now and inspected her with a strange gaze. It disturbed her that she couldn't read his emotions, which was, she had learned, usually not a hard thing to do: Orochimaru never hid his emotions as he obviously didn't feel the need to do so. Obviously, he preferred his minions to always know just how much pissed off he really was.

A slow reply was murmured into his chin. "Is that so…"

His voice was far too flat as well, she noticed, suddenly growing tense with panic. _Not good._ She cursed herself for having been so freaking _insane_ several days ago, as she had obviously lost much of his trust- the very trust she had worked so ridiculously hard _exactly_ for this moment.

Could it be possible that she had blown it all with a single display of defiance?

"W-Why are you going to take us there, Orochimaru-san?" she asked hesitantly, acting to be frightened by the mere thought. She sounded as ignorant as ever as she tried to lead him to believe that he would find it necessary to take them with him in the future. Orochimaru was an egoistical man, she knew. She counted that he would try to justify his 'future actions' by _subconsciously_ trying to find some reason to why the 'future-himself' would take them with him.

Psychology. The power of suggestion was a wonderful thing indeed.

Akane impatiently watched as the dark-haired male thought over her words for an unusually long time. Then he spoke.

"Did you know that Akira, the leader of the team I had sent in Suna a little over a week ago, was one of the three guards that know of your existence?"

. . .

The question caught her unprepared. _What does that have to do with anything?_ After she decided on a mute nod, Orochimaru continued, conversationally, "And he was caught by the Sand official. _Alive._ _"_

A few dubious seconds. Then the girl understood his words and the revelation made her almost dizzy with hope. She discretely exhaled a small breath. "…So you're saying that Sunagakure most likely knows about me and my ability?"

The man's shoulders barely flinched. "If they managed to persuade the information out of the stubborn idiot, then yes, it is highly likely," Orochimaru's lips were stretched into a displeased frown as he ate another bite of his meal, chewing it slowly in thought.

_Suna._

Thought after thought buzzed through the girl's head.

_Will they send a squad to look for me? Will they believe the story about a soothsayer girl? What if- _But before she could think about these new circumstances more clearly, the Snake Sannin caught her attention once more.

"My point is," he smiled in a disturbingly pleasant way, "your _price_ is growing, my darling." Akane's lips pursed in disgust at his choice of words. "You might prove to be a good baiting material for my dear old Akatsuki partner. I suppose it _could_ prove useful to have you by my side when the time comes…"

"I saw Hana in my dream as well," she carefully reminded him, unbearably excited about the fact that her plan was actually working.

The golden-eyed man gave her another long look before he smiled down at her. "Then it's only logical to bring her as well. We wouldn't want to change the course of the future, would we?"

Akane tried to look not-too-happy with the situation, but she noticed how her fingers were lightly trembling and prayed that Orochimaru would connect the reaction to fright. By the broad sickening grin that stretched on his face, she felt confident that that was the case. _We are getting out of here! Oh dear Lord, we are getting out of here! _She could hardly keep back a smile from her face at the thought! Sun! She wanted to see the sun oh so badly!

"We're moving tonight. The meeting will take place in three days' time at noon, and it would be impolite if we were late. Sasori never was a patient man, after all," Orochimaru explained with a slight curl of his lips and an odd fiery glimmer in his eyes. It was a frightening sight which Akane tried to ignore. She merely nodded her head in affirmation and wordlessly slipped out of the room. The bitter irony of the whole simple ordeal after days of nerve-wracking, nail-biting speculations made her want to laugh and cry, but she denied herself both.

_It's time! Finally! I have been waiting for so long!_

However, the days that proceeded began to spiral downward.

Time seemed to have stopped and she thought how every second she spent in her new room intentionally stretched only to torture her further. That never-ending time filled with unbearable thoughts was by far the cruelest thing she had ever endured. Thoughts swarmed her mind, rampant and disorderly, disfiguring and screeching at each other. Thoughts hopefully white and depressively black, excitingly red and dully gray, they made a colorful mosaic that made her inner eyelids burn from its intensity. But then the girl would forcefully blink a few times, shake the long plait down her back, and proceed to obsessively put them in order, piece by piece.

She fed herself with her thoughts, making them her only food. She bit at her lower lip, making her own blood her only water. With each unsaid curse, with every suppressed scowl, her hunger grew. And so she carved her nice, sharp teeth into her bloody, bruised flesh.

In silence.

In impatience.

In _**anger**_.

And then she felt completely drained. She imagined that it was the emptiness of her little room that had migrated into her eyes. Such thoughts scared her and then she would briskly get out of the room and into the corridors. Akane slid down the hallways like a sleepwalker, touching the purple walls, mocking them. They were not alien to her, for the Sound nins and she had switched to the base in the Land of Grass, the one she had seen in the series more than two years ago. The familiarity with her surrounding brought her a spark of confidence and a shade of fright. Only then did she really feel like she was mingling with the canon of the Naruto series and it disturbed her like never before.

* * *

On her little excursions down the hallways Akane would always end up in the little kitchen. This time was no exception and once again she found herself leaning against the table, absently staring at the unoccupied seat at the table. The sight used to be a pleasant one to her, and so she was both confused and flabbergasted to catch herself imagining a raven-haired boy sitting across from her. With a little consideration, she understood what these odd thoughts meant.

She wanted to say goodbye to Sasuke.

…not that the little prick deserved it, oh God no. But the eighteen-year-old felt a strange sort of gratitude towards the avenger. She truly wanted to thank him in some way for his company and all the jolly little 'Hn's he had amused her with. She hadn't, however, seen Sasuke since that dreadful day and was left to spend her time in the kitchen in solitude.

It was the night before the meeting and Akane couldn't even stay still in sickening apprehension and with explosive excitement over tomorrow. Her arms, feet, eyes, they all moved of their own accord, electrified. So the soothsayer was once more alone in the cramped kitchen, taking entertainment in exploring the shelves and drawers. She could almost swear to herself that she had by now learned to recognize different kinds of dust by touch alone, when her hand curved around a smooth, glass object. Pulling her hand back from the cupboard, she eyed the dusty thing in her arm. There was a greasy brown etiquette on its side, the lettering printed in big, bold kanji.

A bottle of sake.

She smiled as she did the math: sake equals alcohol equals no feeling which equals pleasure. Just what the doctor ordered. In a matter of seconds the drink was hurriedly being sipped into a cup. Now all she needed was a—

"I thought you said you didn't drink, Akane-san?"

-a drinking buddy.

The girl turned to the white-haired man who had just entered the kitchen. She frowned. Ok, so maybe Kabuto was not her most favorite guy in the world, but she couldn't bring herself to really care at the moment. She was leaving this hellhole tomorrow, she was holding a bottle of alcohol in her hand, so what the hell, right?

Quickly deciding her mind, she straightened her frown into a more pleasant expression, "I'm not drinking, Kabuto-san," she chirped, pleasantly, "I'm merely having a _taste_ of it. I have never tried sake before." Another cup joined hers on the table, "Would you like some, too?"

The medic seemed mightily puzzled over her behavior, even taking a few daring seconds to see if she was joking. In the end he shrugged and took a seat at the table. Akane positively beamed at him and started to fill his cup. Done, she took the bottle away and grabbed her own cup. A silence fell upon them. It was blank, completely empty and the girl felt no need to fill it with pointless chit-chat. She didn't drink, either. Instead, she watched Kabuto.

The medic sat, leaned back into his chair, and twirled the cup around in his hand. Then he brought his thoughtful look up from it and met her eyes.

"Is there any special occasion you wish to dedicate this drink to?"

. . .

Her breath stopped for a moment.

"Not at all," she coolly replied, "Oh, but has it perhaps been three months since you have kidnapped me? I would certainly like to celebrate such a memorable occasion." Their eye-contact didn't falter for a second, but his eyes stayed glued to hers, evaluating her expression. She returned him a calm, dispassionate stare, waiting for him to be the first to turn his prying look away. A few restless moments and he did so, seeming unruffled by her sarcasm. Then he brought the cup to his lips and took a mouthful of liquid. Gulped.

A second later a muffled sound escaped him. He slammed the empty cup onto the table. "Good sake," he said after a few long moments to her, closing his eyes as if to savor the taste.

Akane looked at her own cup cradled between her fingers. On the shiny surface of the drink, she saw all of her wished victories. They were to be taken slowly, without a rush. There were still things she needed to know.

"I will never be able to understand you."

Yakushi Kabuto moved the cup in front of him and, placing his elbows on the table, lightly supported his head on his arm. "Oh? And why is that?"

The eighteen-year-old twirled her cup in the same fashion as he did a moment ago and watched it sparkle in the candlelight. She didn't even raise eyes to look at him as she spoke, "You're not brainwashed, like the bone-user Kimimarou was. You're not scared of yourself, like poor Juugo is. You're not scared of **him**, like so many. Then why? I don't get it. Why do you follow him, Kabuto-san?"

. . .

A blink. His whole face narrowed down into an enigmatic expression as he replied, "I see no reason for you to question me on this... but I shall indulge you. Let's just say that I support Orochimaru-sama's goals and wish to aid him in his quest for knowledge."

…it was an expected answer she had already heard.

No, there had to be more to it, she knew, and she swore she would find out. Akane leaned back a bit and watched the medic lounging away with green, analytical eyes.

"That is all very interesting. Orochimaru-san's ambition is the most impressive one, if not the most destructive one for himself," she offered carefully, "It's the ultimate truth: life develops the mind and rots the body; the only thing that is of unsure polarity is the soul: the only one of the three components of life he has intentionally disregarded."

It took her as a bit of a surprise when the medic started to snicker.

"Soul?"

His expression was a one between bored seriousness and patronizing amusement, "Akane-san. There is no such thing as a soul. Believe me, Orochimaru-sama's 'disregard' for it, as you called it, is completely justified. In fact, I've looked for it myself… more times than I can actually remember… and it's not there. Only braids of thin nerves, piles of red organs and blue strings of precious chakra." He traced the crack on his cup with his index-finger, "Nothing more."

The girl could feel his poisonous theory trying to sink its claws into her mind. It was beastly, so she rebelled against his words with an unintentionally risen voice, "Well of course you couldn't _see_ it. You two have ripped hundreds of people's souls when you mercilessly murdered them, all for your selfish desires to cut a scalpel into their dead hearts."

"What you call a selfish desire is what I call a scientific curiosity. But yes, of course what I did was selfish. I did it for my own goals, making it in perfect harmony with my human nature. It is only natural for me to be as selfish as the race I belong to."

"So you believe that all humans are selfish, egoistical creatures such as yourself?"

"Worse than myself, for I, at least, admit it."

She pressed her eyelids with her fingers, as if trying to erase a horrible dream she couldn't wake up from. There was no point in discussing the topic any more with him. She had never thought that Kabuto had such a misanthropic view of the world! Each sentence he had spoken only dragged her more deeply into his world, a world she deemed too unhealthy and wrong.

When she looked up at him again, there was a remnant of a twisted upward smile plastered at the corners of his lips, "Are you feeling alright, Akane-sa-"

"Do you hate me, Kabuto-san?"

He watched her silently from across the table for some time, before deciding to grace her with a shifty reply.

"I like to watch you glide down the hallways", he admitted, "It's a most fascinating picture: a fine creature in a cage, only waiting to be used up and then die."

For some reason, his confession made her want to laugh. "You're sick," was her calm statement instead.

The medic smirked at her, "And that is my most profound quality."

"How so?" she persisted, "It's all oddly contradicted, is it not? Your obvious fascination with death and your master's obscure obsession with life are-"

The white-haired man made that small gesture with his glasses she had become so accustomed to, "My fascination with death _is_ a fruit of Orochimaru-sama's attempts at prolonging life. Death in itself doesn't hold my interest in the least. What makes it so magnificent for studying is a phenomenon that it is a direct result of something as common and laborious as life."

The strange explanation made her surprisingly angry, even if she could not define the cause to herself. The long-haired girl quickly moistened her lips with her tongue, before she slurred out a blatant mockery, "Preferring hollow death over the difficulties of life? Well, I must say that _is_ exactly what I expected of a disillusioned man spending his days in a society of corpses."

. . .

Another silence, a silence that swelled and filled the room with tension, poisoning the very air they breathed as they stared one another down. It took her a moment to comprehend that Kabuto's usual falsely carefree smile was put away. His inspecting black eyes were all that was left behind the mask of nonchalance.

"_I_ am able to _create_ life, to _expend_ life, to _**end**_ a life," he told her, slowly stressing each word, "And you? What can you tell me about it?"

Faint tints of red crawled onto her cheeks. "You blasphemously speak of life as if it were an inanimate object! _I_ want to _feel_ life, to _taste_ life, to _**live**_ it! I actually want to be a human!"

"And that is," he explained softly, "your most tragic, most foolish mistake."

When she finally managed to get over her incredulity and speak, her voice was a shade lighter than a whisper and a tint harsher than a hiss. "My _most_ foolish mistake was when I let myself make a deal with your master and let him take it all away from me."

Kabuto studied her face with a new kind of curiosity for the shortest moment. Then he disregarded her previous argument with another arrangement of words. "Don't be stupid. What you did is quite a feat to accomplish, even if I'm sure it was more-or-less unintentional. You've managed to somehow evolve Orochimaru-sama's keen interest in you into a kind of…" he slightly paused in a search for a correct word, "fondness."

An airy cynical laughter vibrated through her throat.

"I do not want his sympathies. I, for once, am aware that I'm nothing but another doll to him. But unlike his most prized porcelain one, the Uchiha heir, a mere rag-doll such as myself does not stay unchanged, looking all mighty and pretty till it's broken with a single swish of the hand." She lightly shook her head. "Oh no, a rag-doll is a better toy than that, as it can be used over again, and again, and again, until it's reduced to a disgusting pile of rags with a lovely collar of a ripped neck." Her lips pressed together, forming a thin accusing line. "You speak of fondness as if it were a special name for possessiveness and slavery."

Kabuto remained strangely quiet.

"It is all a matter of perspective," he finally mumbled out. Akane stood there, inhaling deep breaths and staring at him with enough ice to make Uchiha Sasuke jealous of her glaring capacity.

And then, her eyes went wide with realization. A small knowing smile darkened her lips. "And that is the answer to my first question, isn't it? Usefulness… fondness… Combined as one, as a reason for being loyal to that **monster** of a man? I've never heard of such a twisted logic! It's mad…"

Dropping the cup with untouched drink on the table, she started to pace left and right, "No, I'll never understand you. I could never declare that being useful to somebody is a purpose of my life. I would never let myself be willingly used and, God forbid, cherish it! I'm useful only to myself!" "No," she said, a certain amount of resoluteness in her voice as her eyes flashed to glare at the white-haired medic, "I don't want to talk about this anymore. The fact that I'm exploited here as I am has _killed_ me enough as it is!"

Akane stopped in her pacing and tiredly leaned her head against the wall. The medic watched her outburst with a cold look of professional superiority.

He pushed her cup more towards her with his index finger. "And thus you prove my point. To be useful only to yourself, you say? That is exactly how every single human creature thinks. You accuse me of selfishness, while you compromise for yours with reasons and ethic and moral. You heavily contradict yourself, Akane-san."

The girl looked at him, mouth wide open as if to form the words of defense, but no sound left her throat. She stood there, shaking her head and listening to the words she did not wish to listen. She felt as if she was being force-fed with the food that was overfilled with toxins, but strangely alluring nevertheless.

It was a warped, monstrous view of the world! Then why…

_Why does it make so much sense?_ Her blood ran cold at the thought.

"The body of a human is an awesome mechanism, but it requires no soul. It's all arteries and veins and blood and a bit of chakra. I tell you this as a doctor, not as a skeptic. And even if there was a thing called 'soul', it would be the most easily corrupted thing in the world, dirtied from the very beginning by a trait of egoism, a characteristic of human kind. I ask you now, Akane-san, am I not moral for devoting my life to another?" he inquired in a soft, smooth tone, "And please, spare me of your quasi politeness and that neutral tone of your voice."

She hid her eyes from him, at a loss of words.

"Another thing I've learned in my time as a medic," Kabuto gave her an amused, condescending smile as he finished, "is that _everybody_ is bloody beneath the skin."

"Then let me cheer to you."

A couple of soft steps and she was standing on the other side of the table, meeting his eyes with an odd gaze he had never seen her wear before. Gently, with both hands, she picked up her long-forgotten cup and raised it high to the level of her neck. Her tone had been an angry, cold one, portraying all of her hate for him in those six icy words.

"Let me cheer to our grotesque souls."

It was one of those absurd moments when the young girl thought that she might just start laughing out loud from sheer disappointment. No matter how much she had tried, no matter how much she had pretended, Orochimaru still knew she was more knowledgeable, Sasuke knew she was more arrogant, and Kabuto knew she was far more emotional than she wanted to let it show.

And she had had enough of it.

Akane raised the cup to her lips and smelled the tainted drink. Hot and bitter. At that point she already knew how it was going to taste (_burn, sting, numb_). Still, she smiled up at him, cheered and threw her head back as the porcelain edge met her lips.

_This is the last cup of bitterness I'm willing to take. So let me cheer…_

The liquid glided down her throat, burning beautifully all the way down, and she humbly pitied it as it completely failed in disgusting her. She was far too sour, far too poisoned on the inside for it.

…_to the poisons of the soul. For starting tomorrow…_

To Akane, sake tasted victoriously sweet.

…_I live._

* * *

**Translation: Aut viam inveniam aut faciam**- **Either I shall find a way, or I shall make one (Hannibal)**

* * *

**A/N: Mental torture- gotta love it. xD I don't think that I've ever went so deeply into the psyche of a character as I did with Kabuto right now, my least favorite character of them all. I must say, I am quite proud of myself.  
**

**Tell me, did this chapter make your head hurt? Was it not the most **_**sickeningly**_** polite philosophical conversation ever? Any fave lines? Please click the little review button and let me know! ^-^  
**


	21. Ira furor brevis est

**Chapter twenty-one:**

**Ira furor brevis est**

**A/N: I was so excited about posting, that I didn't even wait for my beta to edit it. XD Pardon my grammar mistakes, and I shall update the edited version as soon as I receive it. Enjoy!**

* * *

Haze... sweltering... heaviness... so much **noise**...

"_Something is going to happen on that bridge, isn't it, Akane-chan? Something that you are oh-so-cleverly hiding from me perhaps?"_

**...T**w**i**n**k**l**e.**

...T**w**i**n**k**l**e.

**...L**i**t**t**l**e.

...Y**e**l**l**o**w**.

**...EYES**.

_A fit of incoherent, hitched giggles- An idiotic smile breaking across her vacant, blushing face, "Ain't gonna tell you! Ain't gonna tell!"_

Funny scents... **bitter**... sweet... **bitter**... sweet...** bitter**... sweet... **bitter...**

_A purr with a warm hand stroking her cheek, "Tell me..."_

… **bitter**... sweet... **bitter**... sweet...** bitter**... sweet... **bitter**... sweet... **bitter.**..

_She laughed as she waved her finger under his nose-"… It... It's a surprise, Oro- chamaaaa...*" she slurred out, eyelashes fluttering drowsily._

... **sweet**... bitter... **sweet**... bitter... **sweet**... bitt**SOUR-!**

A pill.

Green eyes flew open.

A jerk of sleepy muscles and Akane was springing up in a frenzy, shocked and appalled beyond her mind. Another quick roll of her shoulders and the her head was dangling over the side of her bed, mouth wide open, and she was emptying her stomach onto the wooden planks while choking on slimy vomit. Her throat was on fire!

She remembered...

_Kabuto pushed her cup more towards her with his index finger- Something small and round entering her throat before she could even spit it out-_

She **fucking** remembered...

_A pale man entered- A kind smile painted over a sly face-_

A sudden rush of memories, vivid as the lime-green, bubbling vomit she was so intently staring at made her skin crawl in exasperation. Definitely not a hangover. She had been drugged.

… the fucking **bastards** had DRUGGED her!

The girl's sweaty face twisted in disgust as her nausea settled down, leaving a foul, acidulous aftertaste of sickness in her mouth. It made her sick all over again.

_Water._ She craved water. **Now.**

Room suspiciously spinning, Akane waddled to the bathroom barefoot, clenching her head between her fingers for all she was worth. After she successfully grabbed the right sink (_since when did she have three anyway?_) she slapped a handful of water onto her face, the cool droplets almost instantly evaporating on her hot cheeks.

_Slap! _And then once more. _Drink. Breathe in... Breathe out..._

Water gushed through her nostrils. Akane spat all over the tiles as she tried not to gag on a particularly large, thirsty gulp.

_Oh yes... There **will** be blood today... _The morning prediction was written completely on the girl's moistened lips. Gods, when she found that albino rat of a medic she was SO going to feed him his own medi-

Say... where was Kabuto anyway? Wasn't he supposed to come and get h-... !

. . .

She straightened up.

Mortified.

_(Can you say: **Cheers**, darling?)_

* * *

Warm breaths turned into silvery fog in the cold air before her very eyes. Humidity clawed at her respiratory system, making her lungs fight for each tentative inhale. She was _freezing_, up to the point where she enveloped her arms tightly over her bristling skin to provide herself a bit of comfort.

"So it didn't work, huh?"

The trembling came then. "...no."

The chill was coming from inside of her, Akane knew. From her very bones. Muscles drenched in ice. Teeth grated against teeth.

_It's all my fault..._

"They saw right through you, Akane. Your attempts were really," Hana looked at her with a frighteningly expressionless face, "well, pathetic. Of course. _Why_ did I rely on you again?" The younger girl was pacing beside the bars, touching them with the tips of her fingers in an almost challenging manner. "Hmmm, oh yeah, that's right." A pitiless grin flashed on her lips as she spoke, tone cold and unforgiving, "It's because **I**'m in here, and **you**'re out. That's what you said. Hah, one fucking **hell** of a hero you turned out to be!"

Akane closed her eyes as if the girl had just spat at her. She dared say nothing.

_Her mother __blowing her a kiss_- Sister pouting like a small child- Father waving and _smiling warmly at her_- Her class laughing and joking around- Memories memories memories-_ MY fault..._

Hana watched her from her position on the other side of the bars, both hands clenched around rusty, dirty poles. In a brief moment Akane thought that the girl looked almost... mocking. She looked so strangely healthy. **Strong**. Hana, she thought bitterly, wasn't tired in the least. But she_ was_, dear Lord, she was_** so exhausted**._

Casting the thought away, Akane forced herself to speak in an encouraging, friendly way, "Alright, so maybe... Maybe they didn't come to take us this morning... and maybe we can't go home in the near future, but Hana, it's ok. It really is." She put her hand over Hana's on the pole and gently separated her hand from the iron. Her slender pianist finger stroked Hana calloused palm as a means of comfort.

"We can't go back home right now," the long-haired girl stated once more, tonelessly, "But that doesn't mean I'm done yet." Her voice grew louder as she felt frail determination blossom in her chest. "I am definitely getting us out of here."

A snort. "How?"

The soothsayer slowly traced her fingers across hillocks of Hana's palm, "They are coming. Probably this very second, a powerful squad of ninja from Konoha is headed this way. Orochimaru doesn't know this. They are going to crash the base. We are going to be rescued. And then-"

_"What?_ Are you absolutely insane?"

Frightened. In a matter of seconds, droplets of sweat broke out on Hana face. For reasons unknown, the fifteen-year old suddenly looked on the brick of panic. Her arm had gone rigid in alert. "And you didn't tell **him** this? You idiot! He's going to kill us both! He is going to-"

Hana screamed as Akane's nails dug into her palm, deep, **deep **into her flesh. _Sharply. _Dark blood pooled in the crescent-shaped incisions.

In a flash of a moment, Akane tightened her grip on the panicking girl's hand and pushed it brutally against the bars under an unnatural angle.

_Screams._ Hana screeched and trashed like a caught wild animal, as Akane's assault turned more violent. Painfully, **aggressively**, harder, push, _break it, _harder!

_Craaaack!_

A powerful (_much, much too powerful_) jerk of scrawny hands and Hana wrenched out of the bruising grip- Akane was flung back crashing into the wall, skull almost cracking upon the impact.

Bones rattled. A smell of blood. Blackout. Shallow, urgent breaths. Misty clouds of fog rose into the air.

Nothing.

. . .

A sound of her own heart fluttering in her neck.

Breathlessly, steadily, Akane gathered herself up, using the slippery wet wall for support. From the corners of her eyes she could see her friend, holding a twisted, limp arm to her chest. Through the bloody, cracked skin on her elbow, Akane saw, peaked out a shiny, bleach-white bone_._

"What.** The. Fucking.** _Hell?_" Hana swore through her teeth in between heavy pants, holding her ruined hand which had began to spread a familiar odor into the air. Blood. Festering sore. Another wounded screech, "_Why the fuck did you do that_? You insane-!"

_Icily._ "Where is she?"

Entangled, loose strands of hair fell over soothsayer's face as she straightened herself up into a shaky stand. Dazed green eyes focused on the confused inhabitant of the cell, irises boiling in toxic. The lips that had a few minutes ago shaped a fake, soft, convincing smile were now disfigured into a red, murderous grimace.

"**Where** is Hana?"

. . .

The black-haired girl known as Hana widened her eyes in sheer bewilderment. She cocked her head to the side: a gesture of bafflement. "...What... What are you talking about?" She screamed out at her furiously, "It's me, you fucking lunatic! Why the hell would you-"

"I asked, **where is she**," the voice that echoed once more around the room was as threatening as the most severe form of cancer.

Moldy, wet walls observed the scene in deadly silence, vibrating in mute, bloodthirsty cheering.

"What the- Are you out of your mind, what you're talking about!" a desperate yell, "Come on, Akane, stop this! You're obviously not feeling well. They did something to you, didn't they? Just stop th-"

"Hana's scar."

A noise between a laugh and a sob, or maybe it was a just pained cough, escaped Akane's lips. "I guess Kabuto was too much in a rush to remember such an unimportant little detail, wasn't he? Let me refresh your memory. I interrupted his medical jutsu in Futari... and an inch-long scar was a parting gift left between the fingers of Hana's right hand."

"So tell me then..." An unhealthy grin. Fangs bared out. "Where's your pretty little scar, _Hana_?"

. . .

. . .

. . .

She smiled.

Hana smiled at her.

And in the next moment, she was opening her mouth to speak in a different, much deeper voice. At the same time, she changed. There were no dramatic 'puff' sound-effects and no illusive clouds of smoke. Pale straps of air rose from her flesh like steam. And before Akane even had a moment to blink and confirm to herself that she _wasn't_ dreaming (_-please don't let it be real, please don't let it be real, please don't let it be real-_), the image of a young, dark-skinned girl faded away and before her was standing a man...

"You weren't supposed to figure it out."

... fear, pure horror, hotter than any fever, shot through her veins.

Aghast, Akane took a step back...

A gruff looking man, wearing a ninja uniform and an all familiar headband of the Sound, was looking at his wound with an indifference of an old soldier. _**His**__ soldier. _A dark purple mask stretched across his face into a pained grimace as he brought his glassy, cold look at her. "Fuck. Orochimaru-sama's going to be pissed."

...Akane stood still, drunk with fear. Her jaw went slack and mouth fell opened as if to form a breathless cry. The meaning of the imposter's words escaped her, but she already knew, she knew what had happened, what had been happening the whole time (a_ simple, basic transformation jutsu... that's how stupid I am... the **simplest**... **damn**.. **jutsu**..._), and the soft underlayer of her skin was already swelling with wounds. Because on the inside, her own thoughts were attacking her and cutting her open.

Because on the inside, Akane was **demolishing** herself.

There was a frail, fine thread inside of this girl, not very different than there is in every human being. It is vibrant and alive. But, however frail this thread might be, its ends are tightly wrapped up around two equally important and powerful engines: between the Mind and the Heart. Despite its gentle nature, the thread is stretched out and tense, even if it still lightly trembles whenever stirred up by the flows of each breath of life. And just like the rock eventually cracks under waves of hundreds of tides, this precious thread loosens, decays and thins through life as well. It is up to both Mind and Heart to keep it from thinning away, to toughened it up again and together prevent its inevitable annihilation in the far future.

But Akane was so _tired_. Her Heart was bled, her Mind dulled. The already thinned thread was abused and twisted and _hurt _and it had struggled on its own for so _darn _long. It swayed, it trembled, it burned...

...and then it **snapped**.

And Akane...

. . .

Akane screamed.

* * *

She ran.

The footsteps that echoed throughout the hallway were stifled by long furious heaves and the sound of expensive silk being rubbed in shaking, clenched fists. Long behind her, down in the dungeon, the yells of a guard were muffled by the smashed-shut door.

Her heart was heavily pounding against her ribs. It was as if blood had flooded her eyes and she was seeing in front of her in red, fiery slopes. _Run and find him, find him so you can **KILL HIM**- _her mind was ripped apart with chaotic particles of loathing, spitting, hissing. She knew she was losing it but she just **didn't care. **Hate felt **good.** It was let off of its leash and enjoying its mad run and- and for the first time in her life Akane watched it with encouraging, approving eyes.

She was drawn corridor after corridor by a partially locked-up voice of her mind that protested for control but was equally hushed down and shoved away. Candle after candle, fire, ash, she was suffocating! Her breaths came in ragged gasps and _breathe in... breathe out... just breathe damn it! _and she was suddenly losing control over her choking lungs.

She stumbled and doubled over herself in pain.

Clenching her ribcage, Akane pursued without a moment to waste, limping, until she entered the darkness of a wide hall she had intentionally memorized the week before. Pillars were scattered and high, ominously looming as if on watch. Few torches illuminated the room and, just like all the false lights of Orochimaru's fortress, they served only to cast darker, longer shades on the halls.

And there, on the opposite wall of the passageway which Akane knew lead to the outside, glittered the horrifyingly lifelike scales of a giant stone snake. Her legs cut off. For the most terrifying sight in the chamber were the cold eyes which greeted her upon entrance.

Days had passed... Akane had forgotten how hollowness looked in the eyes of a young boy.

Ignoring her misstep, the eighteen-year-old continued to walk towards Uchiha's somber silhouette. Sasuke had raised his head at the sound of her approaching steps, shadows pulling back from his face. Her harsh, pained breathing didn't subside as the male collected himself up in a stand. Against all reason, the motion struck her as gravely irritating.

Akane could recognize his steely eyes sizing her up with... uncharacteristic interest, but he said nothing. The soothsayer stopped when she was a few steps from his aloof posture, trying to speak, to order him to look away, but found herself incapable of any speech. There was something...

...there was something **wrong** with her throat! It was clenching and throbbing hurtfully as if... as if...

"You're crying."

The colorless statement smashed the rotting silence away.

_Wwhat...? _Akane brought her hands up to her face, only to find her cheeks warm and drenched. The salty taste she didn't _(want to)_ acknowledge suddenly flooded her mouth. Her chest was rising and falling in painful, irregular intervals, but now she knew the reason, and it was because...

It was because for the first time since she came to that world, Akane cried.

And without even the weakest struggle against it, without even reaching out for her mask of strength and indifference, she **let** herself cry.

Because when everything fell apart and when her courage wilted, Akane was just a small eighteen-year old girl, a girl who was crying for her friend, crying for being weak, and angry, and because she was scared. She gagged on the tears she didn't even notice before_, _salt biting her lips, but she couldn't stop, _God_, she just _couldn't stop!_ From the force of her emotions her ribs pierced her like daggers, stealing her breath away. She let all the tears pour out of her eyes, and yet the exhaustion kept burying itself even more deeply into her skull.

All the while the boy in front of her watched her, unmoving and without making the slightest sound. She couldn't see his face due to hands covering her face, but there was an air of stunned conflict surrounding him. For the briefest of moment, Akane thought how, even though it was clear that the proud Uchiha thought even less of her now, he also seemed just the tiniest bit _uncomfortable_. And so he kept quiet, and Akane stained her hands as she tried to wipe away tears, weeping just as quiet. The silence eased her pain. It was, she thought, Sasuke's form of comfort... and she was grateful to him for that.

He surprised her by speaking again, "I don't care what happened. It would be better if you didn't come here to wail about it."

Akane couldn't help but smirk a bit. _Such a jerk. _The shade of a smile was concealed by her hands, and when she put her arms to rest beside her, her face was as flat and serious as ever, as if ignorant of the traitorous droplets gliding down her cheeks.

"...your empathy is moving. However, I didn't come here to get your help. Quite the contrary," she met his eyes evenly, "I'm here to offer you mine."

A sly tilt of her head to the side... a motion that drawled a curtain of shadows across her face, only leaving a pair of challenging green eyes to be expected by him. Sasuke's face scrunched upon her change in attitude, but if it was because of the next words that slipped through her mouth or something entirely different, something he saw and disliked in her eyes, she couldn't have cared less.

"How about we make a deal, Uchiha-san?"

. . .

The raven-haired young man crossed his arms in front of him impatiently. Confidence surged through Akane when she understood that he was waiting for her to speak, at least, for the moment. And so she did, feeling disturbingly light-headed, but letting the words quickly and accurately spread out of her mouth nevertheless. She had so little **time.**.. A fact she was becoming increasingly aware of as the seconds went by.

"I'll tell you parts of the future I _know_ you wish to know about..." she started daringly. Sasuke's body gestures were flawless: the boy didn't even flinch. More than a little anxious at his uncaring reception, Akane forced herself to continue in the most serene tone she could imitate, "But, of course, I need you to do something for me. Quid pro quo, and your task would be a simple one."

"It involves finding a girl."

The Uchiha-heir's black eyes narrowed at her. "_I _need to know about Itachi."

"In due time. First thing's first: agree to find the dark-skinned girl you saw with me when I met you, Hana is her name, and I will tell you the first premonition."

Sasuke averted his look from her in a dismissive manner and Akane could clearly trace the movement to his decision: he was going to refuse. The moment she saw this hint of rebellion, Akane quickly added an extra spice to the concoction, "Do it, and I will tell you the result of your plan to kill Orochimaru."

His look snapped back to her instantly.

_Danger._ She put her hands up in a defensive way, "Yes, I know about that. But believe me, I want to see **him** dead just as much as you do and obviously have no intentions of telling him this. The question is, would you like to know more about it, too?"

. . .

It was the longest, most perturbing glare she had been given in her life.

It took a few moments for Sasuke to decide on speaking to her again.

"... Deal. That Hana girl is missing," more stating than asking, the avenger turned wholly to her now.

Akane nodded excitedly, keen on not wasting another moment on fright, "Exactly. Now listen closely. After the fight, you are going to visit various Sound bases, gathering yourself a special group of ninja. All I ask of you is to check these compounds to find and free Hana, as she must have been to taken to one of those facilities..." _for experimenting _went unsaid as she swallowed a lump in her throat. The image of Hana on a metallic surgeon table with scalpels sticking out of every inch of her body filled her mind. It was all such a bizarre, terrifying turn of the events!

"So I will kill Orochimaru," concluded Sasuke, having understood the unspoken interlude of her speech. His voice revealed to her a whole new level of of-course-I-will arrogance that, surprisingly, didn't bother her the least at the moment. "Good. Tell me the details. How am I going to do it?"

Shaking away the stings of panic in her chest, the soothsayer willed herself to continue speaking precisely and calmly, "Unless a serpent devours a serpent, it will not become a dragon**. I'm not saying any further on this subject."

A dark, contemplating look was shot her way, "And Itachi?"

"If you find Hana you are going to take care of her," Akane ignored him, listing her next set of demands, "You'll take her with you until we meet again, and trust me, we _will_ meet again."_I'll make sure of that__. _"And when I say 'take care', I mean keep her **safe** and **alive** until we get together," she defined lastly. It took her a mere glance to examine his reaction.

Sasuke did not look happy. "If you think I'm going to-"

"I'll tell you about the battle," Akane pushed him futher, "I'll tell you about the victor of the battle between you and Uchiha Itachi." She saw his jaw tighten, the way his eyes seemed to say _'I don't need you to tell me that, I know that I'm going to kill him, I __**have**__ to kill him, he __**has**__ to __**die**__' _and the twitch of his arms as he obviously felt the urge to strangle her then and there. But then Sasuke sighed, or at least she thought he did, and looked at her with now deep, crimson eyes. She didn't even dare to take a step back.

"Agree to this," Akane half-whispered as she kept staring at those _demonic_ sharingan irises, "Agree to this... and help us both."

. . .

Proving once more his mastery in concision, Sasuke gave her a one-word reply that, unknown to them both, would have the greatest impact on both of their journeys. A word that sealed yet another deal in the girl's life and that might have been just as risky as the pact she had made with the snake.

"Agreed."

There were no handshakes, smiles or pleasantries. With a curt nod, the deal was concluded and Akane started on her part, "Uchiha Itachi... is going to die by your hands. Heed my words- it will be a battle that will leave your world in _ruins**.**_ It will be a needless fight, enveloped in illusions and lies. You will not be strong enough for Itachi, even though he is growing weaker by each day. However, you _will _be the victor, and in the end, you _will_ manage to kill your older brother."

By the time she finished Akane's face held a scowl of disgust, while Sasuke's looked peaceful and unruffled. Even though it stayed expressionless, it seemed... **happy,** and Akane hated him for it. _To kill your own brother..._

"You will **weep** your triumph."

Red glare pierced her irises, and Akane returned it with equal force. The irony that laced her next words was bitter, up to the point of being malicious, "I have told you of your two _great _victories, Uchiha-san. None of which is real. Remember this. And you'll find out what I mean in your own time."

_Remember this._

Another silence. Another stare-down, now almost a ritual of theirs. Everything seemed just like it used to be. Except...

Except they were both aware that now there was a sort of a connection between them. They were both in denial that they had just asked one another for help. And also, they both would have very well _bitten your head off_ if you dared to even _imply_ that they held a glimpse of respect for one another. Because they didn't...

Nope. Definitely.

Just _no_.

It was strange. For the first time in a long time, Sasuke's eyes didn't seem quite as dead as they did before, and Akane wasn't feeling quite as devastated as a second ago. In one tiniest, briefest moment, to Akane, there was _peace._

"My my, a welcoming party? Akane-chan, I would be lying to you if I said that I expected such an obedient act from you in the near future," a dark, slippery voice broke through the chamber, making both their heads snap into the direction of an entrance.

. . .

And then all hell broke loose.

* * *

"**You..."**

_Rage_. The scenery melted away from her eyesight until all that was left was one perilous grin and a pair of slitted eyes.

A pair of eyes she wished to_ rip_ from its bloody sockets.

"**_You two-faced bastard!_"** Akane screeched through her teeth, her voice smashing against the walls and increasing in volume. The escort on the left of her 'target' seemed genuinely indifferent, while Kabuto's stare wouldn't have been more surprised if she'd sprouted another head on her, completely taken aback by Akane cursing at his master so blandly.

The bastard in question merely elevated an eyebrow, **_infuriating_** her to the core. "You're upset. My lovely, I do not see what all the fuss is about. You complained to Kabuto that you couldn't sleep well a few days prior and he merely assisted you with his medical knowledge. That medicine was all for your well-be-"

"You fed me _a drug_ with _alcohol_ to _dope_ me up, you sick _**son of a-**_!You did it to wrench bloody information out of me!" Akane screamed at him, pure fury clouding her mind. Her whole body trembled from the sheer intensity of her _wrath_. "You- You took away Hana!... oh heavens... WHAT did you do to Hana? Tell me NOW or I swear I'll never tell you a thing no matter ho-"

"How delightful, my darling," Orochimaru stopped her outburst with a strained, yet unworried smile, "I see you found out _that_ little detail as well. _Very_ perceptive of you. However, I don't have the time to deal with you right now: it's rude to the guest. We'll speak about this _most unfortunate turn of events_ later."

_. . ._

_...Most... unfortunate...?_

The sarcastic remark put the simmering whirlpool of resentment in her mind ablaze.

_**KILL him!** _she thought uncontrollably, _KILLHIM**KILLHIMkillHim**killhim**KILLhim**killhim**OHGODJUSTKILLhIm**killHIM-_

Before she knew what she was doing, Akane was crossing the distance between them, going to **hurt **him, to **punch** him, to-

Her hand was restrained in a flash as strong white fingers clenched tightly around her elbow, pulling her back. Her eyes widened when she was stopped instantly in her place before she could submit to the violent urge that had rummaged through her mind. She looked up at her captor, bewildered and speechless for a few dumbstruck moments. Then, she all but _hissed_ at him.

"Let me** go**, Sasuke!"

"Stop it now... Akane."

Another putrid silence ensued as they stared each other down: her look emitting waves of white-hot fury and Sasuke's equally freezing them up. The grip of his hand was bruising, the touch was unwelcome. And yet, between the almost palpable animosity in the whole ordeal, both Sasuke and Akane couldn't help but notice one simple, but completely incredulous thing:

It was the first time they had said each others' name.

Akane blinked hard to force the moment away, "I said, let _the hell_ go of me! Why are you protecting this **vile, foul...** _**thing**_? Or better yet, how DARE you-"

"I'm not," quietly replied Sasuke, an irritated edge to his words.

"Then _**why**_ won't you-"

"Why, how come such a sweet voice speaks words so sour and poisonous?" Sannin's deep, raspy voice pulled all her attention back solely to him. Despite the mocking tone he had spoken in, his face was narrowed into a serious, dark expression that would have made any other living creature _tremble _with fear. "It would seem, my dear, that you have forgotten all that I have ever taught you about _respect_. This unfortunate fault of yours is in urgent need of correction."

"Then _pour _me some more of your poison! It can only strengthen me now!" Akane bellowed. "Tell me what is there left!" a screeching howl, "You've manipulated my mind, you have _shredded_ my spirit, so what is there **left?** What is there left of me to deform, to **corrupt, to take?**"

Akane kept her withering eyes fixed on him; a look Orochimaru returned all-too-calmly, like someone who was taking enjoyment of such a heated strife. There was a strange emotion slithering in his eyes as he opened his mouth to speak again. "I believe we need to change this insolent behavior of yours."

I believe," his voice softened darkly, "a punishment is in store."

The girl shot him a petulant, scornful look. She tugged hard against Sasuke's hold, **screaming**, now in hysterics, "You despicable, disgusting **monster**! Where is Hana? Tell me! Where did you take her? She **must** be alright! You promised! She must be! **Tell me NOW!**"

In her eyes: terror. But only like the weakest sign of her humanity. Deeper, darker, her gaze burned. **Strength.** With all the subsided anger, suffocated defiance, pearly glimmers of those stars she had loved so dearly to watch. Once. _Such a long time ago._

"Kabuto, take her away. I've been withheld from Sasuke-kun's training long enough as it is," the pale man dismissed her, but his leer lingered on her skin nevertheless, "Lock her up for now. I will deal with _her_ later tonight..."

"What are y-" Before she could comprehend what was happening, the medic appeared by her side. Sasuke dropped her arm so that Kabuto could take a rough hold of it, pulling her towards him. "Yes, Orochimaru-sama."

The Snake Sannin turned to the ninja on his left, "Seeing as Akane-chan has already made a show out of it, you should also introduce yourself, boy."

Akane swallowed whatever insulting words she had formed in her throat at one glance at the dark-haired boy she had previously disregarded. Even in the obscure dark of the chamber, the white of his skin stood out unhealthily, the effect doubled by the bareness of his torso. But what struck her the most was his resemblance to Sasuke. Equally black eyes were scrutinizing her from the distance, emotionless and blank.

"Hi there. I'm Sai," the boy smiled an obviously fake smile, "And you must be Uchiha Sasuke-kun—"

Simultaneously with the halt of his words, Sai's eyes grew wide as saucers. For a moment he stared at the hollow air in front of him in pure horror, before his feet reflexively drew back in shaky, insecure steps. This resulted in him tripping and falling down to the floor with a faint, dumbstruck look on his face.

"I don't care who you are," Sasuke said coolly.

Akane watched the strange exchange uncomprehending, her look bouncing between the irritated red eyes and the victim of their power. She could clearly see all the present talking about something: Orochimaru issuing orders and a small conversation between the two boys, but it was all gibberish to her ears. Her mind just couldn't keep up anymore. She could see, and hear, and smell, but nothing registered in her brain as it could recognize none of the impulses that it received.

All she knew was that she was once again _shaking_. She felt Kabuto pulling at her hands and saw him motioning for Sai to follow. She was also hardly aware that Sasuke had literary _disappeared_ from beside her. She only noticed that Orochimaru threw _something_ to the medic, called out _something_ to her and left out of the entrance before she could even react.

The whole scene flew by in haste, familiar and too freaking deja vu, and Akane just stood there, feeling her world fall apart. _Smoldering _her. She was desperate that Orochimaru left her with Kabuto, because she wanted to scream at **him**, to hurt **him**, and she couldn't _wait_ to see him again. Furious hate had accumulated in her being, such a _craving_ to be in the presence of that monstrous man and **destroy** him.

When she finally came to her senses, Akane was already being led down a monotonously patterned hall, following the measured steps of the two ninjas on each of her sides who seemed to be in the middle of a conversation.

"...You can't, or rather not right now. Currently the only subordinates of Orochimaru-sama's are Sasuke-kun, Akane-san and myself..."

Akane kept mute, watching the events that she had seen take place years ago in the show in passive fascination. They stopped before one wooden door and Kabuto introduced Sai to his new room. A few instructions, and the lock clicked. As they left the room, the medic had once again gained the hold of her elbow and continued to lead her further down the hall. He wasn't carrying Orochimaru's envelope anymore, Akane noticed, but she said nothing of this fact.

_I know __**everything**__ and how it is going to happen._

Such a _powerful _feeling for once, but it didn't do anything to prevent it from being utterly strange.

"Both Orochimaru-sama and I have warned you not to test his patience," Kabuto addressed her now that they were alone, "It would be very stupid of you to lose your favor with him in such a way. Do you _want_ to be killed, Akane-san? Your recent behavior has led me only to that ridiculous conclusion."

The girl kept her eyes on the corridors, trying to remember her way in this new part of the labyrinth she wasn't familiar with. "And do _you_ want me to scratch your eyes out?" she inquired politely, "Your recent idiotic remarks have led me only to _that _plausible conclusion. It would be wise of you not to test _my_ patience right now, Kabuto."

The direct threat and the drop of the honorific she usually addressed him with didn't go unnoticed by him.

Kabuto clenched his hand around her forearm, "Do I hear a threat, Akane-san?"

"Deem it as you wish," she spat at him.

The hallway seemed to go on for miles, and the soothsayer thanked to every single holy being when Kabuto finally stopped in front of one door and ushered her in. She could envelop the whole gloomy room into a single look. A medium-sized desk, a half-burned candle, a bed. Nothing uncharacteristic of a Sound's way of furnishing.

"You will wait here. You will be locked, so there's no point in trying to escape, as you already know. Sit and be still until Orochimaru-sama requests for your presence tonight," Kabuto informed her. He have her one last long look before he turned away and exited the room. "Stupid girl. Who knows what will happen to you now."

The lock clicked into its rightful place. Kabuto was gone just like that. And she?

She was fucking _doomed._

The realization of what she just did hit her full force. And still, without a trace of doubt, Akane knew she would have done it again. She only wished she knew more Japanese swear words and that she managed to bring that godawful man _excruciating pain, _to make him pay for what he did, to _bleed _the information about Hana out of him.

Time. Only when a person is alone, caged between four walls and listening to his own breaths does he realize how torturous it is. And time ticked, and ticked, and ticked away...

Akane paced the room like an angry tigress, insanity raising to the surface of her being. It was as if every happy memory that she had ever had came to haunt her: thoughts of her family eating together and celebrating Christmas, _while Kate sang till her voice cracked and she teased her about it, and then their father told them to stop fighting, but neither of them listened until the food was on the table and Mom gave them that one single disapproving look that spoke volumes-_

The discussions with her friends about hundreds of things that meant nothing to anybody else but themselves,_ while the three of them sat and rested their heads on one another, the night air was warm and the music played, and they all knew the lyrics of the song, but they merely listened, because they were too tired from running around the whole day and all the sweets and pop-corn they had stuffed themselves with at the festival-_

How ridiculous her fears before the tests in her school have be_en, but it was so hard, she thought, and she didn't know all the answers, but she promised to herself for who-knows-what time that she will start studying regularly this year and won't rely on mere intelligence and luck anymore, because it just wasn't right-_

-and how her sixteen-year-old life had been generally easy and fun. And how she didn't appreciate it enough.

All those **stupid** things! The freedom to get outside for a walk, the freedom to just sit in the garden and drink coffee, the freedom to just TALK for Pete's sake, to stand behind your opinion and not have to worry if somebody was gonna end your very existence for it. Not to have to worry about surviving, and death, and pain, not only for yourself, but for someone else, which was downright terrifying!

Not to think about blood, and dark, and how afraid you are of tomorrow.

She didn't appreciate it enough! And why didn't she? Now, she didn't know where Hana was, she was awaiting a battle between freaking _assassins_, and again, just waiting. **Waiting!**

Akane stood in front of the locked door, glaring at it as if it were all its fault and hitting it with her fists She didn't know how much time had passed, but she felt that it was at least an hour, so the girl shouted, almost desperately, trying to make as much noise as she could. _Hear me! Please! Somebody __**has**__ to hear me!_ Blood trickled down her wrists. The wooden door resonated under her bruised fists, unmoving and agitating. She persisted, kicking it, pulling it...

… and then the door opened.

Akane went completely rigid, arms paralyzed in thin air.

There, in front of her, at the doorway, stood a black-haired male: a thoughtful look on his pale face and staring unblinkingly down at her.

* * *

**Translation: Ira furor brevis est- Wrath is but a brief madness **

***The baby talk version of the honorific -_sama_ is -_chama._**

**** An eastern Asian phrase: "Unless a serpent devours a serpent it will not become a dragon"- Unless one power absorbs another, it will not become great.**

* * *

**A/N: And finally we jump into the canon of the series (episode 47 to be precise). Also, we are finally there: THE BEGINNING OF THIS STORY'S MAIN PLOT! And it took me... what... only twenty-one chapter? Oh boy. O.o**

**Nice, lengthy reviews, creative threats, and angry 'Update soon's will really make me update sooner this time.  
**


	22. Lux sit

**Chapter twenty-two:**

**Lux sit**

**A/N: A quicker update than the last time! Aren't ya all proud of me? Beta-ed: 13.01.2011.  
**

* * *

She stared back at him, stupefied.

_Sasuke? _she thought. Her eyebrows knit together into a slight frown. _What in the world does __**he**__-_ But before she could divulge her confusion further, her musings were interrupted by a voice.

"Not here," the boy muttered to his chin. And with that said, he smashed the door shut...

_TWACK!_

...right into her face.

. . .

. . .

_...The hell?_

Akane's eyes widened as she blinked at the wooden patterns in front of her. A second passed and then another in speechless staring...

...and _then_ it hit her, the realization manifesting in a low, throaty growl.

"Sai..."

With her hand outstretched she ferociously pushed at the doorknob. The door flung itself open and she, unused to the fact that the previously locked door in a Sound base could _open_ as well as to close in on her, gracelessly stumbled and dropped out of the room like a sack of potatoes. Shaking the loose strands of hair away from her eyes, Akane raised her gaze steadily in front of her. The long passageway stretched into the distance and seemed to fade into nothingness.

Empty. Eerily quiet. Sai had raced off quicker than she could have even imagined.

The eighteen-year-old briskly inspected her left and right. _What should I do? What am I supposed to do? _She feverishly thought, disoriented. _There's no going back now. I've been locked up in that room for longer than I anticipated, since Sai is obviously looking for Sasuke right now. I could try to keep up with him and find Sasuke, but... what for? And Naruto is fighting that snake this very minute. I should... I should... Sakura and Yamato are..._ Her trail of thoughts seized as she couldn't really remember the exact flow of the story. For a frail moment she contemplated staying in the room, thinking that that may be the wisest, but became angry at imagining a scene in which she would be just sitting on the bed, waiting for somebody to take her away, doing absolutely nothing. Just like she had done these few months back.

This! This was it! This was what she had been waiting for! But the question was... _what now?_

Not having a better idea, but feeling the urge to get away as far as possible from the spot she was currently occupying, Akane shot down the hall in the opposite direction of Sai's exit. One thought in mind: she **had** to see Orochimaru again, even if it meant getting in between a fight. She HAD to make him tell her more about Hana's whereabouts, even if it meant him carrying out whatever punishment he had in store for her. **She just had to know!**

The corridor branched into three dimly-lit halls, and when she randomly picked one, it only branched into three more. Two more. Four.

_Just run. _She sprinted until she felt her own breaths choke her and sticky sweat pour down her forehead into her eyes. She was so out of shape that her wobbly legs had already began to give up beneath her. Still, Akane ran, blindly, fuelled only by, not willpower, but pure consuming _hate_. Her zori* hit against the ground and the faint sound echoed around her and-

**...**_apt_**apt**ap**ta**_**pta**_**ptapTapTAPTAPTAPAP**_**TAPTAP**_**-**

Footsteps. Somebody came across her, running past her at high speed. Akane immediately stopped in her place and turned to look around at the newcomers, when something whizzed past her head, slashing her cheek in one clean, burning cut.

Tears glistered in her eyes.

Droplets of blood sprinkled the air.

Her arms went up to the wound and a startled whimper echoed from her throat. By the time Akane came to her senses, the person had already turned back and was carefully holding a knife by her larynx.

"Are you a kunoichi? Do you work for Orochimaru?" a commanding voice demanded. The long-haired girl shook her head multiple times in panic to get her thoughts across, raising her hands defensively into the air, shouting out.

"No! No! I'm not! Don't!"

"Yamato-taichou," a young female voice spoke in a serious tone somewhere from beside her, "Sai said that there was a civilian girl in the base, too... although he didn't specify her purpose here. Do you think we should-"

"There's no time! Orochimaru has just attacked Naruto! Head there immediately," Akane cried in one breath as the hand removed itself from around her neck. She turned around to face a man, probably the most ordinary looking one she had seen in a long time, him being of average height and with shaggy brown hair, with the only oddity being somewhat wide, suspicious eyes. Under the gloomy glitter of the candles, they seemed calculating and highly unsettling, even more so when they narrowed down at her.

"How did you- Never mind, there's no time, you're right," he grabbed her firmly by the wrist, "Come with us."

They moved quickly, not giving her time to regain her breath. Akane staggered after them, resuming her wild pace while holding her throbbing side with the hand she wasn't being yanked by. Keeping her eyes on the dark floor, she watched the faded patterns beneath her feet fly by in a haste, which in return made that sickly, acidic taste return to her mouth. She couldn't take this any more, she couldn't, she couldn't...

"Here."

They came to a sudden stop, and the older man let go of her. His hands joined together, "Sakura... get ready. Keep the girl near you." The light-skinned person beside her, of whom she had only gotten a peripheral view, took her by her chilled hand. The hold was sweaty, warm and oddly firm.

"Wood Release: Great Forest Technique," in a motion too quick for Akane to follow, a smooth, square piece of wood emerged from the skin on the man's palms, growing tremendously in size, and smashed the wall they stood in front of, causing the dirt to rise into the air. Through the gray particles of dust, Akane could see a hallway being revealed behind. With the help from both ninjas on each side of her, she climbed through the hole faster than she thought possible and found herself on the other side of the crashed wall.

The ninja called Yamato motioned for her to stand behind him, "So... it really is Orochimaru again..."

The soothsayer raised her eyes and caught a golden-eyed look. Bile rouse in her throat when he threw her that familiar, deliberately sweet smirk that always came out as condescending.

"Joining up with the Konoha ninja? Akane-chan, you seem to have made it a habit of yours to hurt my feelings," Orochimaru made a mocking gesture by putting his hand on his chest.

It _agitated_ her.

"I will not eat the dirt beneath you any longer," a waspish hiss left her, voice strained from trying not to shout out madly at him. "Don't you dare insult me: such a creature as yourself doesn't even have a heart," Akane snarled, cheeks flushed in renewed anger, ignoring how the ninjas stiffened beside her instantly.

The Snake Sannin's smirk fell from his lips, "Foolish, tenacious woman. But, if you will not come to me willingly-"

"I'm afraid you have much bigger concerns now, Orochimaru-_san_," the young girl managed to warble out, "or have you not noticed yet that Sai is using his technique to track down your precious little Uchiha?"

Thin, dark eyebrows furrowed over his eyes, coating his sharp features into a displeased expression. Without a trace of doubt, Akane remembered that he had just felt Sai using his ninja art. Orochimaru seemed distracted for only a few seconds before he brought his eyes back onto her again. His look made her feel unprepared.

"Naruto-kun, I'll let you all live for now," he spoke to a blond-haired ninja a few steps in front of her she had only now acknowledged. The girl on her right hitched a small breath of apprehension: a sound that didn't go unnoticed by Akane's highly sensitive ears. "Please do your best to kill at least one Akatsuki for me, will you?"

The boy flinched visibly. "W-what?" he asked in a startled voice.

"Now then, I have business with that Sai boy," Orochimaru continued, leering at Akane with a lopsided smirk, "I'll be sure to come fetch you later, my dear. If you'll all excuse me..."

He was gone just like that, a cloud of dirt the only thing left for her to glare at. Disappeared into the thin air, it seemed to her. Somebody exhaled a long sigh of relief as they all watched the empty spot in which the sadistic man stood barely a moment ago.

"Where's Sai?"

The fair-haired boy turned his head over the shoulder to reply to the older man's question, noticing Akane for the first time, "He's searching for Sasuke. Who's _she_?"

All three of them turned to her now and Akane swallowed a lump that had built up in her throat. Her look carefully passed from one face to another, evaluating their features. Yamato. Sakura. Naruto. They were of flesh and blood, their cheeks palpable, their breaths warm, their eyes alive. How strange it all was! And how disturbingly exposed she felt under such unexpectedly strict gazes. The air was of tense and edgy nature, sucking away her confidence. This was _definitely_ not how she had imagined meeting these guys a few years ago...

"Akane," she introduced herself plainly, "My name is Akane." A name is a method of identification, a means of association. Before, the name that rolled off of her tongue had meaning, conjured images, memories of past and present, of the individual it belonged to. But now, when she said her faux name, all she felt was like a hunk of meat.

The ANBU captain nodded to her, "Alright. Akane-san. You're coming with us and you will state your purpose here. You're gonna have to explain to me in detail your connection to the S-ranked criminal Orochimaru after we find our comrade. But now, lets get going."

"It'll use up the last of my chakra, but I'll try to find him with my Mass Shadow Clones. Yamato-taichou and Sakura-chan, you guys search down that way," the orange-clad boy she _knew_ was named Naruto said as he pointed to the direction on his right. She couldn't help but stare at him. Even under the dull orange lighting of the hallway softening it somewhat, the brightness of his jacket seemed utterly ludicrous!

Akane took a glimpse of the pink-haired girl she had acknowledged as Sakura going to pick up a book from the floor, and remembered that she needed to assure her position amongst these suspicious people... even at the cost of their initial disbelief. _It might come in handy later, _the thought occurred to her_. _Quickly assessing the memories of the show that had not yet faded, Akane cautiously moved to the wood-user.

"Yamato-san, you'll find an assassination list in the ANBU boy's backpack over there," she revealed under her breath. "Uchiha Sasuke's on it."

The man tensed momentarily. He leaned in towards her, to shelter their conversation from the two young ninjas talking in the back, "What are you talking about?"

"Go check and see for yourself, if you wish," Akane added simply. His eyes lingered sternly on hers, but she endured the look, keeping her face masterfully blank. Then Yamato did as she suggested, his watchful eyes never leaving her. The man bent over the bag and pulled out a thick book in black, what seemed to be leather covers. After skimming through a few pages, his whole posture suddenly went rigid in alert.

"This is...!"

"What is it?" Even with his back turned to them, both the girl and the boy felt the urgency of the matter.

They took their liberty to peer at Akane from the corners of their eyes. The soothsayer was fine with that. It came as a surprise to her to realize that she didn't care at all what these people thought of her. She regarded them as complete strangers- even though they were not to her. Hurrying up the whole charade up in her mind, the girl counted the seconds till her next run-up with that bastard Orochimaru. Gods, she would make him spill it all out, she had to know what happened to Hana, if she was alright, and he would pay, oh yes, he would pay **dearly**-

"That's not possible!" Naruto waved his hand disbelievingly into the air as Yamato finished explaining the new situation to them, "Sai just said that he'll help save Sasuke! And was smiling, like, a real smile! It wasn't like he did before-"

Sakura stopped his rant with words of suspicion and sad eyes, "But what if... that was all just to trick you?"

...a silence swelled with emotion; one that got unbearably on Akane's nerves.

Yamato held the book up for them to see. "If this is really-"

"While this wondrous game of deduction is quite amusing, shouldn't you be doing something _useful _about Sai?" the eighteen-year-old drawled out in an impatient tone, capturing their attention, "Yes, it _is_ his, and yes, it _is _his official mission to kill the Uchiha, so now that we've stated the obvious, what are we still standing here for?"

Dark glares were shot her way, almost intimidating. _Almost_. Akane felt a strange, uncharacteristic urge to smirk at their expressions. It confused her terribly, but she couldn't help but take satisfaction in it nonetheless.

Lowering his eyes to the floor, Naruto finally spoke , "...she's right. There's no point in standing here and whining. I don't give a damn about Sai's orders or why he was even ordered to kill Sasuke. Right now we just need to find them both."

"What an _excellent_ idea..." the quazi-soothsayer mumbled out, eliciting another bout of shocked looks from her escorts.

Yamato paid her one last mistrustful glance before turning to the other two, "...Well then... I've just felt Sai's chakra a moment ago. Let's hurry!"

* * *

Strong arms stopped her from falling down and smashing her face when tumulus rumbling shook the whole hideout like a roar of an underground monster. The Konoha squad came to a halt, giving Akane a moment of heaven-given rest to compose herself.

"What is that?"

"Sai's chakra-"

"It's over there-"

The eighteen-year-old was panting heavily by now, absolutely and utterly exhausted. Her thin muscles were sore from the constant strain, inflamed to the point of being numb. How could these people run for so darn long _an__d_ at such a wild speed?

_Control your breathing! You can do it. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt._

It did. It. **so. freaking.** Did.

...fuck.

Akane couldn't breathe. She didn't think she could walk anymore either. It was ridiculous of them do demand it of her! She hadn't done any physical exercise for ages, and these people were riding roughshod over her! For who knows what time since she had come to that world, the girl cursed these beings called shinobi. They were **not **fun, and if anybody wanted the convince her otherwise she would have deemed him a masochist.

"Come on, get up. We're almost there."

...and then they were off again. If her pride had let her Akane would have sobbed pitifully. Clenching her teeth, the soothsayer obliged and let Yamatou take a hold of her arm again. It wasn't as if anybody cared for her distress and, as the situation was, she knew she shouldn't really blame them.

But she did nevertheless. Oh boy, did she ever.

Right-

Left-

Right-

Left-

Brightness at the end of the tunnel-

Silence.

"Sakura!" a voice yelled next to her ear as the kunoichi bolted towards it. Everything went still for a moment. And then the black-orange jumpsuit left her side, tripping, but standing up stubbornly and running...

... running into the sunlight.

. . . _Sunlight? Can it really be...?_

The older ninja tightened his grip on her elbow, "Don't leave my side. Is that clear?"

Was it...? Akane only stared in front of her, hypnotised. It really was... Dear Lord, it really was...

"...Yes."

They walked towards it. And suddenly, each step she took felt weightless. Each breath deep. Each beat of her heart slow, painful, but beautiful. _Beautiful. It is all so..._

They stepped outside.

* * *

_Light_.

Her heart remembered light, but her eyes did not. They had spent so much time in darkness that the brightness of the sky above burned painfully. White consumed her vision, hurting, inflaming her nerves. Her eyes shut tightly and harsh, violent vermilion coated her inner-eyelids in boiling blood.

_The light is warm._

She felt she was being led slowly, like a blind-man, across the shattered shards of the walls, of her cage, of her _chains_. They were gone. Cracking under her sandals into pebbles and dust, moaning in the dirt. Purple walls crunched under her feet. She wanted to laugh. It felt _exquisite_.

_The wind is so cold._

She could feel it on her skin, on her face, in her mouth. She thought that she could _taste_ it. The fragrance of cleanness, rid of ashes, rid of acid, rid of chemicals and corpses. Rid of murder. Rid of _madness_. Akane drank the wind.

_This is my moment. Only mine._

And really, right then, and only then, she was content.

For she was breathing.

* * *

Sai was speaking somewhere beside her, outside of the white haze.

"I want to act of my free will. And I think Naruto-kun can help me remember... what it was like to feel. I think it was something really important."

* * *

Blue sparks crackled loudly in the air.

Akane gaped at the scene, exasperated. Never had she truly realised how ideally plain the anime was compared to a real fight._ To real blood._ Because there were no convenient pauses. No showy close-ups. No dramatic rustling of the wind. Nothing.

Disgusting, screeching sounds of metal, feet on the ground and harsh breaths spread throughout the air. Everything was happening too fast.

Grimy dust filled her nostrils. And she was standing there, alone, watching the story she wasn't a part of unfold in front of her very eyes. Finding herself in a middle of it, all Akane wanted to do was leave them be and shuffle somewhere far, far away. There was an adult man with a blade pierced through his shoulder, twitching on the ground, while a young dark-haired boy loomed over him. Down on their hands and knees, faces pressed into the dirt, two teenage boys pushed their hands on the ground to try and lift themselves up. A light-skinned girl stood frozen in place nearby, eyes glassed with emotions so intense that Akane could _almost see_ her irises trembling.

It was all so _horrible._

And yet... it didn't touch her. Not really. The long-haired girl felt strangely detached from everything around her, and the harsh beating of the sun down upon her head made it all so dreadfully disorienting and fuzzy. Her eyeballs burned from the strain she put on them as she shifted her gaze to the blue vastness above her. Up there floated soft, milky clouds. _Clouds..._

"Wood Release: Wood Locking Wall!"

Ground trembled beneath her feet, snapping her attention back to reality. Some distance from her, just as it closed over him, Sasuke broke from the hemisphere-shaped cage, chunks of wood missing Akane's head by mere inches, and he jumped _(jumped! she couldn't believe her eyes!)_ thirty feet high into the air, landing effortlessly on the upper ground. Akane could only stare up at him in sheer bewilderment. To actually _see_ such a thing was a complete novelty to her: she may have taken residence with those three men for months, but she had forgotten that they were something _more_ than regular, albeit psychopathic, human beings. She had seen them eat, drink, read, rest and talk, she had spoken with them, argued and even insulted them, and they!

_They're all monsters._

Once upon a time, when she had watched them in a show, Akane had naively deemed shinobi awesome and absolutely fabulous. Then, when she served them drinks and ignored their provoking pick-up lines, she thought them pompous and rude. And recently, as breathtaking as the sight of such unnatural skills was, she had only seen these people murder, hurt and fight amongst themselves with those exact same incredible powers, obviously designed for that single purpose.

_Terrifying. This world, the world of shinobi, it's just... terrifying._

Naruto was yelling, words breaking against the tall rocky walls, "Why? Why don't you _get it?_" The desperation in his voice, mixed with spicy anger, was resounding, and Akane thought how she had never heard something that made her squirm in her place like that. It was so honest, so pure, and...

… _and so tragically naive._

All he got in reply were cold words, as Sasuke looked down at him, listlessly, "As long as I can execute my revenge, I don't care what happens to me or anybody else. Here's the situation. Right now, neither Orochimaru nor I are a match for Itachi."

"And if sacrificing my body to Orochimaru is the only way to kill him," _Foolishness! _Akane thought, "I'd give my life up a million times over."

Then it happened.

The eighteen-year-old didn't know how that was even possible, or what it actually was, but there was an inexplicable feeling, indescribable by words, that some things would never be the same anymore. That _she_ would never be the same. The girl felt ill, she felt wrong and so impossibly drained and, in the end, she just wanted them to _shut up_, to go on their own ways, with their own problems, and dreams, and all the other _stupidities_ of theirs. All the relief for being surrounded by other humans flickered away, and she just wanted them gone, gone, **gone**, all of them, _gone_.

_But first thing's first..._

The girl ran to Yamato's side, hiding behind his back and clutching the rough fabric of his vest in her hand. The man looked at her from the corners of his eyes, thinking she was cowering in fear, and stood protectively in front of her. She _would_ need protection, she admitted, in a few minutes, approximately. Akane quickly passed her hand across her forehead. It was dank with cold, clammy sweat.

The raven-haired boy she had gotten to know started to make strange gestures with his hands _(hand-signs), _and a pale-bluish light emitted faintly from his skin. Sasuke was going to kill them. Even her, it seemed, as he made no signs of recognition to that point. The soothsayer tried to catch his look, but it was almost as if he were avoiding hers deliberately.

"This is the end," with that said, Uchiha Sasuke raised his arm into the air and-

Orochimaru stopped the technique with a snatch of his pale hand, appearing at Sasuke's side in an instant. Laying her eyes on him, so calm and unmoved, Akane started to shiver now, head to toe, with a kind of ague. Hate spread like a sickness through her organism, boiling her blood.

"You´re not...that technique..." the wind and the distance devoured the conversation between Orochimaru and Sasuke before Akane´s ears could pick the words up. Even so, by Yamato´s slightly narrowed eyes it appeared that he could hear them better than she did. _Never mind._ The girl knew vaguely what they were saying, so she didn't pay much attention. However, she kept her eyes fixed on the Sound trio, anxiously waiting for them to take notice of her. When Sasuke finally cast his look to the ground again, the Snake Sannin´s gaze followed its suit and landed immediately on her.

Even from the distance between, Akane didn't miss the crooked grin that cracked across his face. ¨We´re leaving,¨ she heard Orochimaru say clearly this time and her heart did a double-take.

¨Get her.¨

* * *

She was out of her mind with panic as a kunai flew by her head, aimed at, probably not her, but the man who was carrying her bridal style towards the other end of the delve.

"Naruto, Sai, Sakura, over here!"

The next thing she knew was that she was surrounded with human bodies on each side of her, and in the air so high that she closed her eyes in utter horror.

_Holy-!_

Wind cut at her face. They jumped out of the steep hole and were now sprinting across a yellow plain, towards a smudge of green in the distance. Akane's face was pressed into a male chest, eyes wide and unbelieving, her vision rocking back and forth, back and forth-

"Yamatou-taichou, what are you doing?" shouted a boy somewhere behind the ANBU's shoulder, "Sasuke stayed back there! We are supposed to-"

"Naruto! It's over!" the chest vibrated next to her ear as the wood-user shouted back, "The situation has changed. Neither of us has enough chakra, and we're at a serious disadvantage with a civilian by our side. We're retreating! Head for the forest!"

"But they are on our heels!" an almost panicking female voice piped in, "Yamato-taichou, Orochimaru! Orochimaru and Kabuto are-!"

"They are after the girl," the eighteen-year-old tightened her grip on the jacket to prevent her hands from trembling, "We have to lose them at any cost! Hurry up!"

"No!" Akane began to tear at his vest, suddenly pierced with fright, but over a different reason, "No, stop it! You won't make it! I have to talk to him! He has to tell me where Hana is!" She struggled wildly, forcing him to hold her painfully tight, "Let me GO! I have to make him tell me-"

"Akane-san, please hold still!"

"She's crazy!" to her left a pair of azure blue eyes stared at her, bewildered.

_Outrageous!_ "This. Is. Not. How. It's. Supposed. To. Go!" Akane said with each kick at her captor, thrashing around in his hands, "Just leave me alone! I have to find Hana! I have to go back there! Hana is somewhere-"

"Who's Hana?"

"What in the world she thinking?"

"It must be her and Orochimaru's friend, they talked about her as soon as we entered his base-"

"No way Sai, I mean, geez, Orochimaru_'_s_ friend_?" the three teenage ninjas were confused, and Akane was just about to tell them to mind their own business when-

Her head jerked back when Yamato almost dropped her because of something that embeded itself **deep** into his shoulder. A second later, he was bleeding onto Akane's collar, the smell of blood reeking under her nostrils. To her utter amazement, the older shinobi merely grunted and pressed forward even more harshly than before.

_They are open targets in this field, _the girl realised,_ The only way to escape is to hide themselves in the forest, and even then their chances are slim: they are all demoralised, tired and injured, unlike those bastards behind us! _

The pink-haired girl left Akane's eyesight when she fell back. A moment later ground shook terribly beneath them. Sakura was obviously trying to slow down their pursuers by cracking the earth with her inhuman strength. But the sound of approaching footsteps didn't seize; contrarily, they seemed to be coming even closer! There were shouts of dozen or so Narutos, crying out as they disappeared into clouds of dim smoke. But they were making it- what earlier seemed like mere patches of bushes in the distance, was now a lush green forest that grew nearer and nearer to them, each trunk now clearly visible in the warm afternoon sun.

Something hissed sharply into Akane's ear- a frightened breath- and then the long animal draped itself into Yamato's feet, slithering around his ankles, causing a misstep. Stunned, the man stumbled forward, and she was falling, and falling...

"Sai!"

Thrown into a new pair of arms, Akane closed her mouth in a desperate attempt not to puke over the boy's black jacket. They were moving fast, too fast for her liking, and her head spun and- _holy shit is he holding his hand where I think he is?- _she tore herself away from him for all she was worth to get out of the awkward position she was being carried in by the oblivious male. _What does he think he is doing!_ Sai kept his eyes in front of him, paying no attention what-so-ever to the girl's obvious discomfort, or to the fact that his hand was freely moving alongside her thighs. Knowing that he did not _really_ have any ill intentions, but was rather naturally socially retarded, Akane tried to ignore it to the best of her ability and concentrate on something else. She peered over Sai's shoulder and-

A hand outstretched to grab her, but Sai whipped around, burying the heel of his foot into Kabuto's stomach, sending him crashing backwards, face dug into the grass. Before Akane could see if the medic was going to get up, Sai had turned to their course again, picking up his speed until she could feel his muscles contracting beneath her clumsy hold. T_hat was too close!_ Thoughts jumped into her mind, _Much, much too close!_

A little over thirty yards away the first oak tree cast the first shadow.

The others had caught up and were running alongside Sai and her: Yamato on their left and Sakura and Naruto on their right. They looked horrible with their dirty cheeks, glittering with sweat and bleeding from various cuts; however, no one seemed to be seriously injured. The kimono-dressed girl sighed in relief before she threw a quick look behind them again. Never before had she seen Orochimaru look so outraged before. Even from the distance between them, Akane could see how those yellow eyes flashed murderously, his grin stained with a touch of madness. He had never seemed more insane! Kabuto was running a few feet behind him, his hands shining with a strange blue light in a shape of a blade.

In that exact soul-tearing moment, the unfortunate girl knew. They would never tell her what she wanted to know. They would never tell her where Hana was. It really was over. Tears flooded her eyes, but she reflexively forced them back, not even remembering the reason for such an act. All she could do now was get as far away from them as she could, away from the dark, claustrophobic prison they had in store for her.

Hana was gone, for real, and she would have to find a different way to get to her.

And then an idea occurred to her- sudden and risky and improbable, but it left her mouth nevertheless as she abruptly screamed out, loud enough for the Sound nins to hear. "Now, Yamato-san! Give out the sign!"

Heads snapped in her direction. Confusion. Just as Yamato opened his mouth to ask her what in the world was she talking about, Akane yelled again, furiously.

"What are you waiting for? The ANBU, you idiots! I _know_ they're waiting in the forest for a backup, call them out NOW! Give them **the damned sign**!" her voice was a shriek, masterfully terrified with just enough real desperation to make it believable. One hidden, meaningful look, a complete contrast with her tone, was shot in Yamato's direction. His expression told her that it was crazy, that there was no way such a bluff would ever work-

But he understood and, to Akane's utmost disbelief, gave it a shot. Obviously, he was willing to try _anything_. The wood-user raised his uninjured arm into the air, fist curled and two fingers pointed up.

As the unbearable suspense built up in her chest, threatening to burst, Akane turned her head over Sai's shoulder and looked directly into the madman's eyes. Orochimaru's eyebrows were narrowed, in determination, in anger... and confusion at her words. Using the momentum, Akane smiled, forcing herself to maintain as much dignity as she still possessed to address him.

"I _know_ that body of your is used up. Just like I _knew_ all of this was going to happen. So here's a **free** premonition for you, Orochimaru-san!" she called out to him enthusiastically.

"Congratulations! You are going to _die_ here."

A sick smile stretched across her lips upon seeing his features take conflict among themselves: his fangs were bared in blood-lust, mouth molded into a smirk at the thought of victory, jaw clenched in the thrill of the hunt... but then his eyebrows rose in a genuine shock, and serpentine eyes wide with...

_...Fear?_

"No need to thank me, darling," she laughed sweetly. Her eyes glittered as she yelled out again, an atypical note of cruelty in her voice, "NOW Yamato-san!"

_Please... I have been waiting for so long..._

The ANBU moved his fingers in a sharp, commanding gesture, bringing them quickly down to cut through the air. As the Konoha team rushed into the large, shadowy forest, Akane cast one last suspenseful look at her two previous captors behind them.

. . .

The last thing she saw as she was swept into blank unconsciousness by exhaustion were two furious golden eyes... disappearing in the illusion of red, smoking flames.

* * *

**Translation: Lux sit- Let there be light**

***zori- are flat and thonged japanese sandals made of different materials, from rice straw, other plant fibers, cloth, lacquered wood, leather, rubber to synthetic materials. Z****Ç****ri are associated with the more formal kimono.**

**A/N: And new team 7 enters the picture! I know that I didn't concentrate much on them, but don't forget that the story is strictly from Akane's point of view, and she isn't very concentrated at this point on anything but on what's happening in her own head. Thus the strange, fragmented flow of the story. I didn't 'throw out' the scene's- I'm not describing them all deliberately. Keep in mind that everything is happening just like in anime, but it's all either too fast and blurry or too trivial for Akane to take a notice of. Just to make it all a tad more realistic.**

**Tell me what you think in a review, please. ;)**


	23. Non sum qualis eram

**Chapter twenty-three:**

**Non sum qualis eram**

**A/N: I feel so bad for not updating for more than six weeks, but there was really not much I could do about it. The last seminar of psychology, my prom-excursion to Italy, classes of diplomatic relationships in Europe, Latin tests every two weeks, it all came crashing down on me. And those rare moments when my schedule turned less hectic by some miracle, well, I was kinda occupied with... parties... he he... bunch of eighteenth birthdays (full majority in Serbia). Suma sumarum, this is my last year of high-school, so I'm starting to prepare for a University next year. I've had to make a lot of important decisions, and now that I've finally decided which faculty I'm going to attend, I have to concentrate all of my energy to realize my ambitious little goals. Now, why am I telling you all of this? Because you need to understand that till the end of the school year, I have a LOT more important stuff than writing fanfiction ahead of me, so the chapters will be updated scarcely. Sorry guys, I'm not quiting this story, but that's how it is. A chapter a month will have to do.**

* * *

Following a well-known routine for such situations, the first thing she registered were, not surprisingly, the sounds.

Incoherent mumbling.

Gruff shuffling.

Short, chippering noises.

Then came the first herald of color, cast upon her vision by the dim lighting on her eyelids. She gagged. The **touch**. Her mouth was held wide open by a hand keeping her jaw firmly in place. Only then did the very first thought occur to her. A genius one, anyone will agree, and it went as following:

_'...what in the freaking__**worldisthis**__?'_

Akane jerked from her sleep as solid fear twisted her gut. _She had been caught. _She would soon be locked up, all alone, all _damn_ over again, blindly touching four wet walls in the dark! The frightened girl twitched her eyelids upwards in a vain attempt of opening her eyes. Halfway, though, she halted the reasonable action, because her body had apparently decided that it was too much of an effort, especially when the first thing she saw upon performing such a _tremendous_ task was a suspiciously **pink** object floating in front of her.

The shaking in her lower limbs was the first indicator to her that something was very wrong. Her breathing was reduced to short snuffs, and her heart shook her rib-cage. Suddenly she became very aware of her existence: knee brushing rock, bare feet dug into grass, sticky sweat pouring down her back. Mostly, though, she felt a warm throbbing in her groin. It sickened her that she had somehow been affected in such a disgraceful way...

"She's waking up."

Well golly gee, she really was, and she was in a _fierce _need of a bathroom. Rolling her head on her neck, Akane curled her mouth at another painful lurch of her lungs. Throat convulsing and stomach turning, she threw up wretchedly at her side, the spitting just barely missing the tips of her hair. This was not an awfully lucky coincidence: there were fingers fisted in her scalp now, holding the streaks up from her face. Another hand, presumably belonging to the same good Samaritan, was gently pressing on her back.

"What's the matter with her?"

"I have no idea... But-"

"Sakura-chan... what did you _do_?"

"I _didn't_ do this, stupid," an indignant puff, softened by a mild dose of doubt, "There are remnants of some drug in her blood. My best guess is that this is _its _doing... in combination with exhaustion, shock, and probably even something else I can't for the world identify..."

Needless to say, Akane couldn't have cared less _what _was causing it, but the blasted thing better stop it RIGHT NOW, **goddamit,** just STOP for crying out-

"Breathe. Breathe like this," the advice was spoken into her ear. Somebody was guiding her hand to put it on the spot where her rib-cage ended, just above her stomach, and to apply low pressure, "Slowly, take deep breaths. No, don't move your shoulders. Just breathe."

The Sound-escapee didn't enjoy being told by somebody else how to freaking _breathe_ of all things, when she had been doing that just fine _thankyouverymuch_ for the past eighteen years. She did, however, comply and did as she was instructed, intent of pushing the unbearable nausea down.

Inhale. **Deeply.**

Exhale.

Again.

Inhale.

A few more times.

Again. _Again._

The moment she felt capable, Akane cast a quick sneak-peak beneath her eyelashes at the person in front. Strawberry-pink hair, that had probably been a bubblegum in one of its previous lives, caught her immediate attention once more. _Sakura, _the name came to her. _Haruno Sakura._

"Yes?" the girl asked and Akane realized groggily that she must've said it out loud, "That's me. We... We were introduced earlier, were we?"

Akane thought for a short moment before replying. "No... no we haven't," she croaked out. Her own voice reminded her of a dried-up stone fountain: cracked and cold.

It was easy to leave it at just that. The kunoichi didn't push the topic further, but the 'soothsayer' suspected that questions would arise to the surface as soon as the opportunity presented itself. And it would. _Of course_. She could feel the presence of other people around her and so she tried to turn her head to look at them over the light-skinned girl's shoulder. Sakura, unfortunately or not, was moving again, and in the next moment there was a cool, watery feeling pulsing through her forehead, behind her eyes, settling at the very back of her head. It pushed down the headache that had built up and soothed her screaming nerves.

Suddenly, Akane felt calm. The change was so abrupt the girl was afraid that she would retch again. The medic of the ninja pulled back and inspected her with _unbelievably_ green eyes, "Can you stand up now?"

A weak protest. "...I'd rather not."

Apparently, her honesty wasn't appreciated.

"Try at least," an arm began to hook itself under her shoulder but, a violent jerk later, Akane roughly slapped it away, straining a hostile hiss through her teeth.

"Don't. Touch. Me."

Surprise stuck on the medic' face, revealing a flicker of hurt in her eyes, before her whole expression narrowed itself down into an irritated, stubborn one, "Hey, isn't that a little ungrateful yo-"

"We're just trying to help you," a man in his thirties came to her view, lowering himself into a crouch so they were eye-level, "Akane-san, was it? My name is Yamato and I'm the captain of this squad." He wasn't wearing his forehead protector and had taken off the upper part of his usual Leaf attire, leaving him in a casual long-sleeved shirt. A slightly dimpled chin, that obviously hadn't been shaved for a few days seeing as it was covered with light tuft, was the first thing she took a notice of. She had never seen it in the anime, but in the flesh...

Yamato motioned somewhere behind him, "These two are Sai and N—"

"What have those bastards done to Sasuke?" a patch of sunny-blond hair threw itself into her face. Her body felt heavier and her arms hung sloppily by her sides. It took her a moment to comprehend that she was pulled up into the air by the collar of her kimono, all the while being repeatedly shaken like a rattle. "Hey! You in there? I asked, why is Sasuke-"

"What are you doing? Naruto, you idiot, put her down NOW!"

"But! But! But she knows-!"

"Naruto-kun-!"

"If you choke her I swear I'll-"

A almost inaudible whisper, "Uchiha... Sasuke?"

...The shaking stopped.

An excited twitch of fingers.

Complete, deathly silence ensued.

"That guy..." Akane breathed out slowly, intentionally, before she looked up into wide breathtakingly-blue eyes.

_Challengingly._ "Has he always been such an insolent little bastard?"

. . .

Abruptly she was let down, landing hard in the dirt. An itch in her ankle turned into pain. Something rotted in her stomach. Stunned, electrified air.

_(And you did this why?)_

She looked up at him. When the tanned boy finally addressed her again, his voice had grown older and frighteningly flat. "I don't care who you are, and even if you really are a civilian. But don't you dare..." his fists clenched at his sides, "Don't you dare talk about Sasuke like that in front of me ever again."

Akane sat, hands crossed quintessentially in front of her. She watched him, silent, for a few heavy moments. And then...

"My apologies." A faint smile, leaden with pity, appeared at the corners of her lips.

The boy in orange stood dumbfounded, not sure if he was being mocked or not. Unsure of what to do next, he flatted his hand into the air and turned his back to her. Vaguely amused with his behavior, Akane carefully picked herself off of the ground.

"Naruto..." Sakura muttered as he went by her. Akane watched his retreating back with a placid look of indifference. Leg in front of leg, she watched on as the swirling sign on his bright jacket shrunk and the blond walked away, out of her sight.

"What's the matter with you?" The moment he was gone, the kunoichi turned angrily to the soothsayer who was, on the other hand, straightening her clothes rather slowly and uninterestedly, "Who gave you the right to talk about Sasuke-kun like that?"

"Sakura-san," the pale boy, Sai, came closer to them, "She said she was sorry. She smiled-"

"Oh for heaven's- Sai, do you really think she-"

"Enough," the team captain put an end to the argument before it could develop any further.

The air was getting too thick to breathe.

He came toward the long-haired girl, directly addressing her. "You're forbidden from provoking my squad in any way, is that understood? You're in a very delicate position, as you are probably aware, Akane-san. A thorough questioning is ahead of you, and we've been patient only out of our good will. It would be best for you if you didn't take advantage of that," he warned, his voice formal and business-like.

The eighteen-year-old took in his words with a mute nod, like a child being scolded by his parent. She felt nothing, really, about his preaching, and only discreetly crossed her legs beneath her. _Toilet. _The word rang in her mind. Yamato's prattle continued on and Akane blocked him out completely.

A light fragrance of reddish, blossomed thorn lingered in the air. Feverishly, she drank the scent as if it were wine. So desperate had she been for it. Just to feel it, to taste it. She leaned her head back onto the bark of the tree. Above her, beams of light danced between the leaves, making them twinkle against the azure sky.

"... and Sakura's going to take you to the stream to clean yourself up. I suggest you use your time carefully. Now that you're awake, we're going to pick up our pace."

The girl known as Akane blinked. Her head lowered. "We are going to Konoha?" she inquired.

The man watched her attentively.

"We're going to Konoha," an affirmation.

Her only response to that was a smile.

Needless to say, Yamato didn't smile back.

* * *

Akane stood knee-deep in freezing water, happy to loiter, for she was enjoying the stinging sensation so much that even now, if she had had the chance, she would have waded in the opposite direction and then swam away. The fact that she was with people from the Leaf and currently safe made no difference. She felt an uncharacteristic urge to splash the water around with her feet, carelessly like a toddler, but refrained from such a questionable action. The girl was acutely aware of Sakura sitting on the rock nearby, probably analyzing her every step. The pink-haired girl was far from stupid, highly observant, and to top it all, she was also a _ninja_.

Akane found that this fact wasn't frightening anymore, but could be rather described with an adjective 'irritating'. It was just another circumstance this world had to push down on her. Just another obstacle specially designed to make everything harder. When she thought more carefully about it, she felt strangely indifferent to the whole situation. Yes, her nerves were taut, and yes, her resolve was shaken, but emotion, _real_ emotion, seemed like an inconceivable, abstract concept.

She scratched the itchy place beside her mouth. Staring back at her from beneath her nails were grains of crusty, brownish-reddish gunk, that was somewhere between being in liquid and solid state. She brought her fingers to her nose. The grime was sticky and smelled familiar, yet odd, unpleasantly so.

"I treated all the cuts you had," Sakura called out to her from her guarding spot nearby, "But you should clean all that blood quickly, before it completely dries up."

"... Right."

The soothsayer knew that a 'thank you' was in order, and yet saying it was out of the question. Not that she knew _why_, really, but she thought that it would feel awkward saying it out loud. She had had nothing to thank for in such a long time. She had _forgotten_ how to do it. So she did what she deemed to be the most sensible thing to do:

She said absolutely nothing.

The pearly surface of the stream glimmered in the warm sun, seizing her increasing interest. There, in the glassy folds of the water, stood a young girl, looking equally surprised as she did. Akane's lips parted with a breath. The first thought that came to her mind when she laid her eyes on the image was that something just wasn't _right _with her. The girl who mirrored her shocked face was, too, in the white nagajuban*, long hair falling over her shoulders and...

And the long-haired girl couldn't believe that this was her own reflection. _It couldn't be._ The last time she saw herself in the mirror her cheeks had been a healthy pink color from spending her days gardening in the fresh air, and her shoulders had been a not-so-healthy pink from the time she had spent outside in the blazing sun. Now when she looked at herself... she saw a ghost. Carried by a moment of morbid fascination, she leaned to the reflection and touched the face in the water with the tips of her fingers. She was so... _white._ Her skin was pallid, almost sickly so. Her lips were red and purple, carved with sharp bites. Akane couldn't even remember when did she develop this nervous habit. The most curious thing, however, was the strange, wary glint in her eyes. She didn't remember her eyes being so expressively green either. The only time they changed color that way was when she was near that boiling point of anger, she recalled, so what did this all _mean_?

Harshly droving her hands through the reflection, Akane smashed the surface of the ice-cold water. The picture of a young girl broke into a whirlpool of small, circular waves. The original one stood up rigidly and swallowed a lump in her throat.

Those _eyes._

_Akane's_ eyes.

They bothered her for some reason. It bothered her that ever since she had come to that world, even though her surroundings changed a lot, it was always _she herself_ who she could count on to be the same. Constant. True. This was, apparently, not the case anymore. This change, this vivid, stark morph of her own being, was something she had always _dreaded_.

Shaking away her thoughts, Akane continued to scrub the specks of blood from her arms and face eagerly, pretending to be ignorant of her 'body guard'. Sakura was watching her with a clearly suspicious look now some distance away, not even bothering to hide the curiosity in her eyes.

"You have several bruises on both of your arms, ankles and around your neck."

Startled by the matter-of-fact tone of the other girl, the eighteen-year-old glanced down at herself. _Well, lo and behold. _There were brown smudges, outlined with a greenish tint of yellow, around her wrists and some on her forearm. Resembling a shape of _fingers_. She brought her look back up.

"So?"

"They're almost healed, which means you got those before we met you. I'm estimating... around a week ago, right?"

Akane raised her chin, "And your point is?"

"You weren't hurt severely while living with the probably most dangerous men in the world, but you weren't unharmed either," Sakura continued in a neutral tone, "You aren't a shinobi so you couldn't have gotten those in a fight, which makes me conclude that it was most likely Orochimaru, Kabuto, or some other minion of his who did it to you, correct?"

"Again, is there a valid point you're trying to make?"

"It would've made sense if you were a mere slave or something, of course, but that is one _really_ beautiful, and I bet expensive, kimono you wear," Sakura finished as the older girl came out of the stream and bent to pick up her clothes. Then the pink-haired girl went silent, and only settled for giving Akane a long, penetrative look.

As for the said girl, it took her a few dispassionate moments of confusion to digest the medic girl's innuendo. Then another one to convince herself that she _didn't really _understand her correctly. Lastly, when that failed, another moment was wasted away on complete shock and widening of her eyes.

Empty silence.

And then she exploded into a fit of low, dangerous syllables.

"A-Are you saying that- They- I- With them?" she struggled, finding herself incapable of constructing a sentence from sheer bewilderment. Never before had she been called a... indirectly or not! The air was positively choking! Red came onto her cheeks, caused by the emotion she had become more than familiar with...

_(Anger? Hello, yes, this is Tolerance, maybe we should meet sometime.)_

A deep, calming breath she took didn't help the situation. "If you think..." Akane fumed, "If you think I would EVER-"

"Listen, I know it must be terrifying and, maybe even embarrassing, to talk about such a trauma, but I can help you," the sixteen-year-old girl spoke _irritatingly_ softly, standing up. Her voice was warm and filled with care. As you surely guessed by now, the offered help was interpreted like an act of patronizing by Akane, and thus she gasped again.

"How dare you? The raw nerve of you, to even i_mply_ such an atrocious- My God, how _dare_ you?"

"You can tell me, I won't judge you or anything," Sakura tried again, yet Akane only backed away, unable to compose herself.

"I can't believe this..." she shook her head, "Your immediate conclusion is that the unknown woman in the enemy's base _has to be_ either a ninja or a sleazy lowlife! Stunning you are! Your logic is bullet-proof!"

_(Would you like some bitchiness with that sarcasm, honey?)_

"Alright, I get it! No need to get snippy," the pink-haired girl, also, was starting to loose her temper, and her knuckle twitched despite her careful control. "It was not my _immediate_ conclusion, but it was the most _probable_ one, as **that** is, unfortunately, usually the case. Sorry if I offended you, but you must understand that this is a normal procedure-"

"Oh, no, I have no doubts at all that your sworn duty is to go around affronting people," Akane said spitefully as she picked her kimono from the ground. Nonchalantly, she draped the clothing over her bare shoulders.

Sakura gaped at her, probably wondering about the existence of such an _aggravating _girl, before she spoke, "I'm not going to argue with you. You've obviously been through a lot, but that doesn't give you the right to treat people so rudely. I don't know what happened to you in there and, personally, I don't think I want to know. However, Yamato-taichou** does. So dress quickly. We have a lot of questions for you that are in need of answering..."

With that, the emerald-eyed kunoichi sat back on the rock and averted her look from Akane. A few seconds of glaring daggers at her, and then Akane did so as well. For a moment she felt terribly stupid, but let none of her inner conflict show on her face. With the elegance of an even-tempered, gentle woman she most certainly couldn't claim to be anymore, the eighteen-year-old continued to envelope herself into fine, silk layers, her back hunched a bit with something that maybe, just _maybe_, might have been shame...

* * *

"I hope you're feeling well enough to give a few highly-needed explanations, Akane-san," the man beckoned her to sit on the log opposite him, "Let's go from the beginning."

Akane looked around, confirming to herself the positions of the other three ninja, before she took the offered seat. Naruto was standing some distance away, obviously having not forgiven her for her remark from earlier that day, whereas Sakura and Sai sat on her left so the three of them, plus Yamato, formed a circle. Bottles of watter and packages of onigiri*** were brought out of the hand-baggage and divided amongst them. The air was warm, the breeze soothing, and the faint smell of herbs and honey from the forest seemed tortuously nostalgic. Akane intently gazed at the rice ball in her hand.

"The beginning?" Quiet, so quiet had been her voice when she echoed the previously spoken statement, that it was difficult to decipher if she had even spoken at all.

_The drowning? The girl who could still call herself Elisa and her annoying neighbour Sandy? The confusion, the fear? The responsibilities and nightmares and worries and hunger and-_

She exhaled an exhausted sigh. No, she could never tell them of that. Why did she even contemplate it? Did she really want to tell them about all of her childish cravings and all the mistakes she had made? So many mistakes.._. _It was a moment in which Akane realized that she was **terrified** of making another one. And to avoid it, she had to forget about Elisa. Completely. To talk about this world, to talk about the pain and danger, she had to be only Akane.

"My sister, Hana, and I used to live in a village on the border of Fire and Rice," she started out calmly, and for a moment it was if a color of sorrow beclouded her eyes, "Futari, the place was called. We lived with our Grandma, grew our own food, and lived happily. When she died and we lost the house because of our relatives, we got ourselves a job at the village inn. Lived there, worked. And that was fine also. But one day, a white-haired guy came to Futari..."

"Kabuto..." Yamato guessed, and Akane nodded her head. The shuffling of the aluminium foils quieted down as everybody listened to the strange girl's story.

"Yes, Kabuto," she unconsciously fisted the material of her kimono, "He acquainted himself with my fifteen-year-old sister, and then with me. Hana took a liking to him, which he used to try to snatch her away from Futari, because-" She turned to face Sakura, "Did you notice something strange about me when you examined me this morning?"

The medic girl blinked once, passed her look from one face to another (it was clear to Akane that they had already discussed it amongst themselves), and then replied, "Yes, I did. It's... odd, but it seems as if you don't even have chakra. We all noticed this the first time we saw you, which confused us because we could also tell that you're obviously not a ninja, and therefore couldn't be hiding it. Most of the medical treatment I gave you was by traditional ways, while I only managed to diminish your headache a little by directly using chakra."

"The truth is that, for some reason, I really don't have a chakra network," Akane explained to them, "And neither does Hana. Kabuto, who had, just like you, noticed this phenomenon, became intrigued and made a plan to kidnap Hana, whose trust he had at the time. All for the sake of experimenting..." She stopped there, momentarily haunted by bizarre images of needles and syringes. Hair bristled on her arms. Still, she kept a stiff upper lip, and forced herself to finish.

"But then I... I slipped, and revealed something I shouldn't have..." she said grimly, and mentally prepared herself for what was to come.

* * *

"You better be joking..."

"For the last time, I'm telling you- Although, I must say your reaction _is_ much better than Kabuto's... His immediate response was a blade under Hana's throat..."

"Yeah, right, sure you did."

"You know, that's kinda cool..."

"No, Naruto, that's pretty much _impossible_-"

"Akane-san, I asked you not to lie to us. But you insist on making this difficult."

"I'm not lying!" the 'soothsayer' sat up finally, fed up with doing nothing but defending her claims against the shinobi's incredulous staring for the past twenty minutes. "Look, what do you think, why in the world would Orochimaru keep me healthy and alive for so long? If he only wanted me for my lack of chakra network, I would have been dead already, my organs piled up in multiple jars all over his shelves, in alphabetical order," she reasoned out, tiredly gesturing with her arms.

Yamato and Sakura looked at each other. "There are alternative explanations..."

"For the love of-" Celsius by Celsius, she swore she could feel her blood boil. _So it came to this_. There was no other way around it. It was her initial idea, to convince them the same way she did the Sound ninja, but she didn't have the time to weight the pro's and con's of such an action. Would it _really _do her good to once again take the role of a prophet? Akane spun the pedals in her mind wildly, and yet the idea didn't move an inch.

It would have to be served hot and untasted.

"And what if," she cut in quickly, just as Yamato opened his mouth, "What if I provide you a proof?"

"Would that suffice... Tenzo?"

. . .

By the look of shock that exploded on his face, Akane was pleased to know that she hit the jackpot. For once, memorizing stupid, useless information from cartoons came in rather handy. Naruto turned to the wood-user, faint whisker-like lines protruding over his scrunched face, "Huh? What is she talking about, Yamato-taichou?" Sakura, probably wondering the same question, turned to her superior as well, while Sai spoke up.

"It is your real name, isn't it, captain? If that's the case, she must have read it in the files Danzou-sama gave me to deliver to Orochimaru. They consisted of all the ANBU members under Hokage-sama. Yours must have been amongst them, as well."

"Wow, ya mean your name isn't Yamato?" Naruto's eyes bulged in pure disbelief, "But why would Tsunade-obaachan-"

"Naruto," Yamato hushed him up, "I'm an ANBU, therefore I gave up my name as soon as I entered it. You should keep calling me Yamato-taichou, as that is who I am for as long as this is my team. Ok?"

"Right, Yamato-taichou," Sakura confirmed.

Another comically suspicious look was sent by Naruto, but as soon as he noticed the shift in Sakura's posture he nervously exclaimed, "Ok, ok, Yamato-taichou it is."

A moment passed, and then Yamato's expression straightened up into that calm face he usually wore. Yet, however unmoved he appeared, the older man still kept his look fixated on the now silent kimono-dressed girl. A serious expression greeted an apathetic look.

"I've noticed that you seem to know quite a lot, Akane-san," he told her, "but it is as Sai said- this still doesn't prove that what you say is true."

The ninjas fully expected a twitch of guilt to appear on the obviously-delusional girl's face, or a shaky confession to leave her mouth next. What they certainly _didn't_ expect was to see a small, but definitely there, yawn stretch from her throat. "This is getting ridiculous."

Thus Akane opted for a different approach, "What more do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you how she," a light motion of her wrist to Sakura, "cried her eyes out and _begged_ Sasuke to take her with him on the night when he left the village? Or would you prefer it if I told you how this guy, the Jinchuuriki of the Nine-tailed demon fox, fought to a brink of death with his so-called-best friend at the Valley of the End? "

_('Kick where it hurts' approach? Nice going, just lovely...)_

"Or maybe you want the details?" she continued even harsher when she saw Sakura lower her head. Under the layer of complete surprise, all of them watched her with eyes filled with an emotion akin to distaste. She was aware of the fact that her skinny, almost childish appearance didn't even imply such a pompous temper as hers. "Do you want me to talk about Kakashi, or Ino, or Iruka, or-"

"I told you not to provoke-"

"Tell me, how do you think I managed to trick Orochimaru, the biggest manipulating bastard of them all, into believing that there was an ANBU squad in the forest? Do you remember my exact words then?"

"That is enough-"

"Do you see me not-caring?" Akane snapped finally, "Can't you just **get** it? Hana is out there somewhere, probably being tortured and starving this very minute, hanging onto every precious moment, while I'm just standing here, **wasting** that time with the bunch of you, who can't even give me the slightest break and believe me! You can't even imagine how perfectly **stupid** this all is!" She took her head in her hands, as the increasing migraine wrecked havoc inside her head, and sat down when she noticed that she had jumped to her feet in some previous moment. The young ninja were probably upset with her, but somehow none of it mattered to the trembling girl. She didn't even care to look at them, but only buried her face more into her hands.

_I have truly lost my mind, or Orochimaru had managed to steal it after all._

. . .

There were steps in front of her, and when she raised her head slightly she was staring right into the knees of the oldest shinobi.

"We can't trust you."

While he said that, his voice was soft and final, which pained her even more so. "I do believe you're honest. Everything you said is, also, true, as much as I can see from my team's faces. But we can't trust you. What I do promise, though, is that we're going to take you somewhere where you'll be safe. We are going to try to help you. Konoha is a good place to clear everything up."

Unable to bring herself to look up, she mumbled into her sleeves. "I know," the words left her more out of habit than out of an actual intention. "I know."

_I know. S_aying those mere words aloud, she instantly felt ... invigorated. How refreshing did they sound so free in the air! It was as if they conjured up energy in her being she didn't know she still possessed. _I know. _She felt like saying it over again and again until she was completely out of breath. Those two words, that one simple sentence, she thought, held such **power**.

Encouraged, Akane looked up straight into Yamato's eyes. The girl was displeased to realize that she couldn't distinguish the finesses in the wood-user's expression that would've otherwise given her a hint of his thoughts. It had obviously been starting to get dark some time ago, and thin shadows were already welling up around objects, crawling around the corners of his face. She turned her head away from him. The setting sun kindled the sky with dull oranges and fiery reds. Trees glowed in the soft, garnet light. It was all so absolutely _thrilling _she unconsciously held in a breath.

A sunset.

_(It has been so long... and they helped you see it again.)_

"As for your sister, there is nothing we can do for her at the moment," the ANBU reminded her, sounding almost compassionate, "If you proceed to cooperate with us, I assure you, we'll do what we can to back you up when you meet the Hokage. Isn't that right, team?"

So relieved was she when they all nodded their heads (albeit insecurely) that she didn't notice the strange way a pair of blue eyes inspected her with. Akane let a trained smile pull at the corners of her lips in response, as a way of expressing her gratitude. She made a motion to get up, but even though she was light in weight, she was too heavy for her own legs. Sakura was quickly by her side, offering a hand, but Akane politely refused her help once more. If the medic thought anything of this action, she said absolutely nothing this time.

"Alright then. Let's get going."

As the Leaf squad began to pack-up, Akane followed the darkening clouds across the burning sky, thinking. Everything would be good now, she convinced herself. They would help her. She would _make them_ help her. Her chains were finally gone.

_(Or they are _inside _of you now.)_

She shrugged it off. Either way, she thought, it was only important that she could _move_.

For now... For now that was more than enough.

**

* * *

Translation: Non sum qualis eram- I am not who I once was.**

*** nagajuban- undergarment worn under a formal kimono. Thinner in fabric, shorter in length, usually white.**

**** taichou - suffix for 'captain'**

***** onigiri- Japanese rice balls, often wrapped in seaweed, very portable and because of this very popular as carry-on lunches.**

**

* * *

**

**A/N: I'm predicting that there will be a lot of questions concerning the seeming 'OOCness' of Akane. To clear this misunderstanding let me apologize beforehand: there are huge time gaps between the updated chapters, so I can't really expect of you to remember the subtle/or-not-so-subtle hints I left in them. If you read the last few chapters, you will notice that Akane had already started to act... off. Bitchy almost. Anyone will agree that this OC has been through A LOT, so all of her suppressed anger, fears and wishes are culminating in these two last chapters. From the chapter three you could see that Akane was always quite a sarcastic person, even arrogant, but she knew to keep it under control. Now... well...**

**Bonus question: Have you noticed something... different about the text I usually put in parenthesis? Think about it... ;)**

**Is a review too much to ask of you? Please?**

**No?**

**Alright. Be that way. xP**


	24. Maximum remediae irae dilation est

**Chapter twenty-four:**

**Maximum remedium irae dilation est**

**A/N: Merry Christmas to whoever celebrates it on this day and I hope you're all having wonderful holidays! Here's a little present for y'all. I want to wish a very happy birthday to my little sis, xxMissFortunexx, the little devil born on Christmas (the irony of life -_-, and yes, we repeat this joke every year). It is because of her that I worked extra fast to finish this chapter, so it's her you should all give your thanks to. After all, 6000+ words IS a big deal. ;)**

_

* * *

Two years, one week of June, three months and five days._

_Three-hundred and sixty-four days, and three-hundred and sixty-five days, another ninety-two days days, plus twelve._

_That is..._

_Seven hundred and twenty-nine plus one-hundred and four..._

_And that would be..._

_Darn..._

She closed her eyes to visualize the numbers easier.

_729+104_._Twenty nine plus four. Thirty-three._ _Seven plus one. Eight._

Eight-hundred and thirty-three? Yes, that was it. Eight-hundred and thirty-three was the number of days she had spent in this world. But, no, it wouldn't be fair, Akane thought. She didn't live day by day, not even an hour by an hour, but this whole time she had been surviving minute by minute. Second by a second. Should she multiply eight-hundred and thirty-three by twenty-four hours? And then by three-thousand and six-hundred seconds? She should, she agreed, but she couldn't...

...could she? She DID have enough time... It wasn't as if she was doing anything _useful_ really, so maybe she should-

Every muscle in her brain screamed to oppose her thoughts.

_(Impossible! Girl, you're absolutely mad. Focus! They're speaking to you.)_

"...ght."

"What?" her neck twitched painfully when she snapped her head in the direction of the voice, "What? Sorry, what did you say?"

Sakura, who looked mightily pale under the white hood, looked at her weirdly, before she pointed to her robes, "I said, Akane-san, that you were given this coat for a reason. The period between the dry and monsoon time of the year in our Land of Fire can be detrimental for your already-damaged health." At Akane's blank look, she sighed and prompted again, thus, "Please, put the hood on. It _is_ raining heavily, after all, and it wouldn't do you good to catch a cold now."

So lost had the eighteen-year-old been in her own head, that only when the younger girl mentioned it did she start paying attention to reality. Her cheeks were slippery and wet and, when she touched them, Akane felt a sting of panic.

_Cold, not warm. Raindrops._ _They aren't tears._

Relief washed away the momentarily troubled look on her face.

_You aren't crying. You'll never cry again. You promised that to yourself. Never again._

As the soothsayer slid the hood over her drenched hair and shadowed her eyes, she grimly calculated her previously puzzled inquiry. The conclusion was simple:

**Forever.**

_I have been in this blasted world for far too long..._

* * *

The Leaf ninja and she were currently walking along a muddy sodden path, enveloped in clusters of trees full of leafy green foliage. The earthy scent filling the air was intensified by the downpour of rain. It was roughly the afternoon, a very wet one at that, the sun missing in action much to their dismay. Yamato had announced that they had crossed over to the Land of Fire's territory an hour and a half ago, even though Akane hadn't seen any welcome-poster that indicated so. Also, the road they were taking didn't have one single sign along its way. It appeared that ninjas had a keen sense of orientation, but what was it based on remained a mystery.

They had decided to take the side route: the dirty, broken road they were currently stumbling on, which went through the jungle of trees. The main road that connected the two lands of Fire and Earth was wide, clear, efficient, and hence popular with merchants, which made it an immediate 'NO' now that they were traveling with the 'soothsayer'. The ANBU captain was certain that Orochimaru had realized Akane's trick a moment too late, and that he was now probably pulling his hair out in rage (well, Yamato didn't say it like _that_, but Akane was rather amused at imagining such a _sweet_ situation). His guess was that Orochimaru would at least try to snatch her back, and the large road would be the perfect opportunity for it. If they were attacked on such an open field by the feared, not to mention pissed off, Sannin and his minions, they would be pretty much done for. No tricks this time.

And thus Akane found herself in this predicament: Yamato on her left, Sakura on her right, Naruto leading in the front, Sai trailing in the back. Apparently put down by the meeting with Sasuke, they were all awkwardly _silent._

It drove her **nuts.**

She wanted more voices, birds, winds, noises, _anything_, just so she wouldn't have to listen to herself. Her mind was _pregnant_ with thoughts, and they were born bare, screeching and demanding, wiggling around her head restlessly. And she was like an exhausted nurse, trying to figure out every single one of them and pamper its requests.

The truth was, Akane found that it was getting _increasingly_ hard just to think.

The girl was almost happy when Yamato turned to her and asked her questions. Intent on earning their trust, she told him everything, counting all the prophecies she had shared with the Sound shinobi. Told him about Naruto's training with Jiraiya (the boy in question glanced at her, startled, but curiously didn't say a thing), about Tsunade, Kabuto, Sasori, Gaara, even Orochimaru's childhood, then about the Akatsuki's attack...

The captain's voice turned slightly edgier, sharper. Yet she remained unmoved. Akane didn't rush to vindicate herself, nor did she insist on convincing him. She replied to his questions like they were completely trivial and boring, viewing in Yamato neither a danger nor a hope. That obvious disregard of his authority and his persona, as if his existence was an absolutely unimportant coincidence, must have stung his human vanity, but the wood-user didn't show it in one single gesture, remaining completely passive and professional.

If anything, it was most certainly impressive, she admitted.

Then the quiet would stretch around them once again, and Akane would begin counting trees. It was a habit she was consistent in back in her world. Her look would always wander around, patiently counting windows on skyscrapers, and she would often find herself counting the stairs in her school. In Sound bases, as well, she used to count cracks in the walls and counting the tiles in Kabuto's pharmacy was the only thing that had kept her in check during his administrations with a needle.

Numbers, as opposed to words, were the most soothing thing in the world.

Even though she hated the silence, she had to admit that she absolutely **loathed **exchanging words with these people. Alright, sure, she knew somewhere in her mind that they didn't mean any harm, but while she was accustomed to words filled with mockery, she was infuriated by words filled with _pity_. Or _care._ Or _whatever_ you called it. Sakura learned first-hand not to approach her with the 'good-doctor face', cause then Akane knew to get nasty. Was it because of something that had happened between the Sound's medic Kabuto and the older girl, Sakura didn't know, and the whole 'I'm fine. Leave me!' demeanor confused her greatly.

Mostly because the civilian girl was far from 'fine', as the medic could clearly tell. Akane's reactions to the smallest, abrupt sounds and movements triggered violent reaction from her body. Quite a few times it happened that the girl would start acting abnormally, even though she herself waved it off. Akane would walk in quiet, seemingly deep in thought, and then, as if disturbed by something she could only see in her head, the eighteen-year-old would suddenly still, her palms would start sweating and her knees would tremble and buckle beneath her. Just like when she had first woken up a few days prior. The look in her eyes would turn completely blank, and Sakura would immediately be by her side, noting that her muscles were tense, that the girl was choking on her own breaths, that her pulse was fast and irregular.

Sakura didn't know what was it that was causing it. The drugs that could have been the cause of such attacks had surely gone out of her system by now through regular urinating, so this was something completely different, something that she couldn't connect to the girl's organism: the bruises on her skin aside, her body was as good as new. Further more, Akane refused to acknowledge her help, insisting that she had suddenly felt extremely nauseous, because she was just too tired and that she will be fine, because she had had migraines before, and really, _what can you do about it anyway? _The kunoichi suspected that Akane wasn't even _aware _of all the odd reactions of her own body. After a few seconds, or even minutes, of such an episode, the focus would come back into the soothsayer's eyes, as if she were 'switched on', her limbs would relax, she would get up on her own, promptly refusing her help, and continue on as if nothing had happened.

The pink-haired girl grew, however slightly, disturbed with the young woman. Not because of whatever was wrong with her body (she would discus that with Tsunade-shishou anyway) but she was rather disturbed by the older girl's cold-blooded confidence. The self-proclaimed soothsayer walked a slippery and perilous road, but stepped firmly, with her entire feet, trusting some inner sureness that she would not fall. That she _must not_ fall. Metaphorically or not. Her eyes were vibrant, suspicious, but not fearful. Concerning the situation and the condition she was obviously in, it was more than a little unsettling.

Akane was aware of the other girl's thoughts (_her face easy as a book to read_), and did nothing to disillusion her. The truth was that her courage was based on the fact that she felt completely indifferent to the outer world. There were walls surrounding her, brought up out of habit, created by necessity. They appeared cold and unbreakable from the outside, while on the inside they were damaged beyond repair. They _leaked_. She was lost and absent-minded in herself, and yet she appeared confident and strong. _Because she had learned to hide in front of other people._ The depression had turned into animosity and all in order to smother the uncertainty that ate her from the inside, nibbled on her resolve. So Akane relished the anger.

After all, anything was better than the fear.

* * *

Since the civilian girl was slowing down their trip, the Leaflets (as she _affectionately_ called them in her mind) and she had made quite a few bivouacs.

_Another four_ _days. Ninety-six hours. 96x_ _60, that's... Six_ _multiply six, thirty-six, nine_ _multiply six, fifty-four, plus three, fifty-seven. Five-hundred and seventy-six. Another five-thousand, seven_ _hundred and sixty_ _minutes gone to_ _**waste**__._

Time, time, _time_, **time**. Gone, wasted, rushing, hectic. That was all Akane could think about while she stared off into the fire, lips curled around another tasteless, mushy rice-ball. Every now and then she would sneak a peek at the drawing in Sai's lap, as he corrected the assortment of colors with a smudge of dark, night-sky blue.

"It's very good."

Now, what in the world had made her say that? Was it boredom? The natural human urge to speak? Did she even really mean it? Or was it just that she enjoyed it when Sai faced her, so she could confirm to herself that her own face at least wasn't **that **expressionless?

As predicted, the pale boy raised his head from the sheet to study her. He was sitting cross-legged some distance from her, solemn, as quiet as usual in his thoughts. The light from the bonfire painted some color on his cheeks and his eyes seemed unusually alive. Only when a blank, cheerless smile pulled at his lips did Akane realize that it was all nothing but an illusion.

"Sakura-san also said that to me once," he said, and then added as if he had just realized something, "Oh. I guess that all bitches like drawings, yes?"

. . .

If it were an anime, Akane was sure that there would be one hell of a vein popping from her forehead.

"What did I tell you about calling me a-" she stopped, looked at the still smiling boy, and then sighed.

"Alright. Forget it. Never mind."

"Forget that you liked the picture?"

"No. The picture's just fine, Sai-san. Please. Shut up now."

The ANBU boy stared at her uncomprehendingly for the shortest moment, before he dug his nose back into his work. Akane shook her head in defeat. The truth was, she preferred talking to Sai than any of the four. Mostly because the boy didn't talk too much, but neither did he talk too little, and when he did he would call her an 'ama*', which gave her the reason to indulge in a cleansing verbal lash on her side. Sai would merely blink and smile some more, until the girl was finally through. As simple as that. Yamato, Naruto and Sakura took no part of it.

The night was dry and only mildly chilly, as if the heavy rain had never happened, and it would never happen again. The bleach-white moon, like a bone, hung above her head and its light spread around the clearing, veiling it like a cobweb. The soft chirping of crickets was the only sound she could hear beside her own breathing. The other three Leaf ninjas were gone to scout and lay traps, while Sai was 'the unfortunate little soul' ordered to watch after her. If one were to ask Akane for her honest opinion, she would have told him that his company wasn't in the slightest as awkward as one would think.

"Done, done and done! This'll be enough!" the sheer enthusiasm in the voice startled her out of her reverie, making her jump in her seat, "I figured that since I was so much faster than those two, I should pick some wood by the way, for the fire. Smart, huh?"

The blond-haired boy came out of nowhere, dumped a stack of twigs into the fire, and then plopped to the ground to leisurely lay on his side. "Ne, Sai," he yawned, "could you bring out somethin' to eat? I'm starved."

Akane blinked. Sai stayed completely unfazed. And unceremoniously threw him dinner.

"Thanks," Naruto started the eagerly unwrap the little package as soon as it landed into his hand. Then he halted half-way, thumbed the foliage, distracted by some thought, and turned around, "You, onee-san**, I wanted to ask you something."

The soothsayer instantly looked at him, eyes narrowed and doubtful.

It was... odd. Not to mention completely unexpected. The hero of the series had just addressed her directly for the first time since that 'incident', when she had taunted him. To put it frankly, that had by no means been a 'spur of the moment' reaction, but a carefully planned action on Akane's side. She had figured that with his hot-temper, Naruto would stay insulted, avoiding her and pouting, at least till they came around Konoha. Or it was rather that she had hoped that to be the case...

The thing was, Akane truly didn't wish to speak with Naruto. Such a thought made her uneasy. After all, the bloody show was _named_ after this little chump in front of her. It was too dangerous. On one hand, it was tempting to experiment with the power she had in this world, to whisper the merest hints into his ear and see how the story might change; but on the other hand, she didn't know how would the change affect _her, _and so she kept withdrawn into herself. She wondered, would she lose, even a little, that sense of power she had because she knew so much more than them? Or would it grow, as a sense of power had a habit to grow, so much that she would lose herself in arrogance? She had already known that feeling... And pleasurable and exciting as it was, it was far, far too dangerous. Power was like a drug, and her body was desperately weak, craving it with each new step she took. The eighteen-year-old was afraid that with her personality she would easily fall under its influence.

"Something the matter, Uzumaki-san?" the girl quivered politely, careful to avoid his eyes and appear uninterested. Her whole posture gave away the 'whatever it is, I want no part of it' aura, but Naruto was not one to be deterred so easily.

He started, persistent, "I've been meaning to ask you... Back then, when you were in the Sou-" The piled up branches began to smoke and eat away the flames. The fire started to extinguish, quickly, coughing and hissing and...

"Katon***!" A blaze of fire ignited the squirming wood, lighting it up once more. Blocks of wood protruded from Yamato's hands and fell into the flaming bunch in a matter of seconds, twitching and blackening in color. Naruto watched the whole thing in unhidden wonder.

"What was up with that?"

"Naruto..." Sakura stepped to him, slowly, head lowered and brow twitching, "Did you put all those branches into the fire?"

The blond stared at her. The newly-arrived duo stared back.

"Yeah, of course I did!" the boy raised his hands, interlining them behind his head in a casual fashion, "That's just me, Uzumaki Naruto, always thinking of everythi-"

"And that's why you dumped a whole bunch of moistened, **wet** wood into it?" Was Akane imagining it, or was there really a faint blue light around the other girl's knuckles?

"Huh?"

"It _rained_, Naruto!" the pink-haired kunoichi stated, tone increasing in volume, "Did it cross your mind that the obviously wet wood **can't** light a fire? Or that if we wanted wood Yamato-taichou could just make us some?"

"But—But—Sakura-chan-!"

"Will. You. Just. Learn. to. Use. Your. Head!"

A sigh of relief made its way from Akane's mouth as Sakura tried to explain basic physics to Naruto... with her fists. There was nothing to worry about. Naruto was obviously hopeless when it came to real-life situations. He couldn't possibly use anything even if she told him. It was all too easy.

She would go to Konoha and make a deal with the Hokage. Nobody and nothing would stop her. These people would merely get her there.

_These silly people, all of them, _she thought, _are just a means to an end._

* * *

"Are you going or not?" the soothsayer cut in impatiently with an obvious tap of her foot, startling them by the sharpness of her voice. The 'Leaflets' were in the midst of an argument, concerning Sai, Sakura, and one awful, inappropriate word.

A roll of her eyes. _Again._

God, she didn't know that the process of socializing Sai was such a hard, almost impossible task to accomplish in reality! There were loads of confusing explanations (courtesy of Naruto), patient preachings (Sakura) and 'I read it in a book' comments (Sai), and it was all getting unbearably irritating to Akane.

Yamato was, fortunately, wisely silent.

According to the _only mature of the four ninja_, they would make one last stop at the inn a few kilometers from Konoha by nightfall, if they picked up the pace. She didn't care what the others thought, but Akane was determined to get there as soon as possible. The eighteen-year-old had found out that she really wasn't that eager to camp outside for a fifth night. Not to sound spoiled, but she _did_ prefer a fluffy pillow, not bugs, under her head at night, and a smell of a warm cabin, not muddy leafs, first thing in the morning. Those were the little comforts she had even when she had been with _Orochimaru._

_That __**snake**__. _She clenched her teeth at the memory. The wounds from everything that had happened were so fresh that the ex-prisoner could still _feel_ them burning at her flesh. If hate had a smell, the air behind Akane would've reeked of blood. If it had color, black, sticky footprints would've followed behind her heels. The girl suppressed her exhaustion and walked, ignoring jokes, laughter and the most comical situations around her.

Nothing of it was of any importance to her anyway.

The proximity of their home seemed to have smashed the tension away, and the ninjas were already acting more freely. The effect was amazing. Only then did Akane see how... childish they were. Definitely childish. She couldn't comprehend how these people, supposed to be killers, **ninjas,** could behave so innocently, so... teen-like! It was_- dare she say it-_ refreshing, true, but she couldn't take them seriously. Watching them, Akane felt so _old_. For the first time in more than two years, the eighteen-year-old had that feeling that she was stuck in the middle of an anime, a children's show.

Naruto and Sakura mostly talked amongst themselves, cheered each other up, and just seemed so _darn close_. It made Akane feel something... something unpleasant... something she couldn't identify, but it was most certainly there, right beneath her skin, and it was _itching._

* * *

When they arrived at the old-fashioned inn, the sky was already swelled with sparkling stars and the moonlight spread across the darkened windows like a fluttering ribbon. The inn-keeper was an old-looking man with strong arms and a generous smile (_Ken, her mind whispered a memory, and her gut clenched against her will_), who welcomed them and instantly prepared them rooms. They took two, one for the boys and one for her and Sakura.

As soon as they entered their room, ordinary and cozy, the kunoichi started to pedantically sort out the contents of her small bag on the bed, counting shurikens and equipment. Akane used that time to shower, which she did unnecessarily quickly, careful not to look at herself in the mirror. She knew that the image would only disturb her.

"I'm not hungry," she said to Sakura, who was preparing for her shower as well, and headed for the door, "I'll be on the porch for some time."

"I won't escape," she added quickly when the other girl opened her mouth to argue against it, "I need you to get to Konoha, to get protection, Sakura-san. I'm not stupid enough to have another ninja crew on my tail if I try such a brainless action. All I want is to be alone for a little while, is that too much to ask?"

The medic watched her, contemplating her words. She looked uncertain. "Alright," she finally said, "But I'm gonna have to tell Yamato-taichou about it."

"Do as you wish," the soothsayer waved her hand dismissively, "I'll be outside."

Only when she left the room and got into the hallway did she smile to herself. _Peace. Quiet. No overbearing thoughts. Just sweet exhaustion._

Trying not to draw too much attention to herself with the other guests (which failed miserably, since most of the male travelers had an irritating habit of ogling young, kimono-dressed females such as herself, and the more attentive female watchers were shocked by the dark bruises covering her arms) Akane exited the small building and stood against the fence. The forests reached as far as the horizon, lit up by the whiteness of the moon. Silken rustling filled the air, cool and clear as it was only in the evenings. With a wistful sigh, Akane leaned her elbow on the rafter and tiredly supported her head with her left palm. _There is a whole, huge, vast world out there..._

Her right hand trailed the smooth wooden surface. And then, slowly, as if scared, her fingers moved on their own. Her thumb, fore-finger and the ring-finger drummed against the solid surface in repeated order, and Akane watched them with sudden fascination. _Moonlight Sonata, _a voice from the back of her mind reminded her, _The composition I'm playing... is Moonlight Sonata... _One by one, her fingers pressed on the imaginary digits, on the imaginary piano. She remembered how the song sounded, heard the notes in her head, and felt hopelessly nostalgic. It was a simple melody, one the first songs she had learned to play, _how long ago was it? _and the combination was imprinted in her mind, the sound of an old piano so thickly woven into her memory. The movements of her fingers became more confident, her knuckle crackled, a soft hum filled her mouth.

The wood beneath her fingertips sang.

The air around her was warmed with imaginary music, and it looked to her as if the notes were carried off into the forest behind the inn, dark and quiet, making the leaves dance in the pale moonlight. The last note as she finished vibrated in her ears, low, strong, so _real_, the quiet that followed it sang in itself, her heart pounded and her lungs were full of something, heavy and light at the same time, was it happiness, she didn't know, or sadness, she didn't want it to be, but she couldn't breathe, God, she just _couldn't breathe,_ and she was suddenly afraid because-

Someone was behind her.

Abruptly, the girl stiffened. Her left hand reflexively curled into a fist next to her cheek. A tentative drag of her tongue over her lips.

The quiet stared at her treacherously.

"Is there something I can help you with?" she called out over her shoulder to the newcomer, tone demanding and acidic.

...Nothing happened.

For a few moments at least. And then... a sound of footsteps came in reply.

Closer.

She kept staring into the distance.

Closer.

She drummed her fingers nervously on the wood.

_Closer._

She whipped around-

"Oi! What were you doin' just a moment ago?"

A pair of brilliant blue eyes blinked innocently at her. As if a bucket of liquid relief was dropped onto her head, Akane dropped her raised hand by her side. Her heart sank back into the pit of her stomach.

"Oh! It's just you," she skilfully recovered, lowering her voice in a neutral tone.

"I was practicing the art of silence. Care to learn about it?" she turned her back to the curious blond, "Start by going away."

To her chagrin, Naruto stepped to her side, chuckling to himself (_was I __**funny**_ _by any case?_), before he put his elbows beside hers on the rafter, "Can't. Yamato-taichou told me to keep you company. I mean, seriously, I only ate like six bowls of ramen, and he sent me away from the table with such a lame excuse! Geez!"

"Hmmm, yes, the nerve of him," she mumbled dispassionately, pinching the sleeve of her kimono. From all the people she had had the pleasure of speaking with, Akane had most problems with understanding Naruto. While his way of speech was clear, it was much too simple (which made her feel like she missed at least half of his sentence) and used lots of slang, some of which Akane had only remembered because of Hana. Compared to his natural way of speech, she realized how much she sounded like a stoic textbook.

"Right!" he agreed, satisfied with her back-up, "But, you know, this isn't so bad because... well..."

The orange-clad boy turned to her, a funny look of penitence scribbled on his face, "I wanted to apologize to you."

. . .

_...What?_

"What?" the soothsayer gasped before she could filter through her words, "Why?"

Naruto looked at her like she was the one that wasn't making any sense.

"Because I ignored you and acted the way I did?" it definitely sounded more like a question than a statement. "Look, I know that you've probably been through hell with that snake-bastard, but I seriously didn't get why do you act so bitchy and all (..._did Uzumaki Naruto just describe me as 'bitchy'?_) even now when you're away and safe from them," he confessed in one breath and took another.

"But then you told us about your younger sister, that Hana..."

At this, Akane's look connected with his eyes. They seemed... full of sadness. _What in the world for?_

"And I finally got it. I could see how much in pain you really are..." his eyes lowered and he proceeded to gaze at the viridian-colored grass. Wind whistled between the treetops. Naruto scratched his neck awkwardly, while Akane listened to him, eyes wide and unbelieving, "And... I... I kinda understand you. I understand that you absolutely need to find Hana... I've just realized how same we are."

She shook her head, uncertain, "I'm afraid I don't understand you."

"We are both searching for our family," he said, not looking at her, "Hana... she's the only family you've got, isn't she? And I can relate because I also have a brother, not by blood, not even a friend I sometimes think, but I still consider him my brother. The guy you met at the Sound... Sasuke... is a member of my family. He was one of the first people to acknowledge me and one of the first people I felt that I could even call that."

He smiled at her from the corners of his lips, "I'll continue to search for him, and I'll bring him back home. Cause Sasuke's still there, I know it. I just need to dig deeper, search harder than ever to find him. So I wanted to tell you not to give up."

When he turned to face her again, Akane was taken aback by the strong look in his eyes, "You'll definitely find your sister. I'll help you do it, Akane-chan."

. . .

_This guy..._ Akane thought, _How can_ _anybody be so..._

_...so.._.

_...is there even a WORD for it?_

Words scattered around her head, disjointed phrases, laughs, jeers, but none of it made any sense, none of it conjoined with the rest. For once Akane was left completely speechless. She observed the young boy's face, his fervent eyes, his huge winsome smile, how serious his words sounded, how the air around him seemed to warm her up, just like music, and it was hard to imagine that this sincere young man in front of her was the exact same stupid blond ball of excessive energy chanting "Hokage, Hokage!" over and over and _over_ again back then when she had watched the series.

At last, her lips parted, "Naruto, I... _(Thank you! Thank you so much!) _… I neither need nor want your help."

. . .

Naruto looked at her like she had just told him that all the ramen in the world had disappeared over night!

"But it's the right thing to do! I really _am _going to help you," he tried again, enthusiastically, "And then Tsunade-obaachan can-"

"Your generous opinion doesn't matter to me in the least," the soothsayer turned her face away from him, drumming her fingers uninterestedly on the rafter, "Hana is _my _responsibility. As lovely as your offer is, Naruto-san, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of it by myself. Why do you even think I would _accept_ anybody's help?"

Abashed, unprepared for such a reaction, perturbed by the weirdness of the whole situation, the blond-haired boy muttered, "I... I thought that you looked sad. I thought that you would appreciate having someone willing to help y-"

"I was never one to mourn my life while I'm still alive."

"Then why do you act like that? You've been so rude to Sakura-chan-"

_Frustrated._ "Because sometimes-!" Akane cut herself short.

"...Because sometimes the best cure is poison," she reluctantly finished, breathing a half-whisper into her chin; knowing that Naruto couldn't really understand her, and yet the sour words spilled out of her mouth nonetheless. The younger boy stared at her, trying to translate her words into a language he was familiar with, trying to catch the beginnings and the ends of her thoughts in the air, but they were evading his fingers, floating away.

Oh God, why did she speak in such a way! In the speech of mannerly, educated people that, on her bitten, chapped lips, could sound only hypocritical! She remembered how her nights had been spent kneeling on the moth-eaten, cheap futon, repeating Japanese words over and over again under her breath, and to someone else it might have looked like she was praying. Akane would sit on her hurting kneels, chanting phrases and sentences in long, tired breaths, convincing herself that they would be useful to her some day. The villagers were both amazed with her eloquence, and pitied her at the same time. What good would her silver tongue bring her, when all she would ever do is mop floors and trim the weeds? More often than she would have liked to admit it to herself, Akane wondered this question herself. But her tongue **had** saved her in the end, had brought her _unbelievable_ power, the power that she was now using to cover herself in, to make herself impossible to understand and console.

Right beside her, so close that she could feel the warmth emitting in waves from his arms, Naruto watched her, silent.

In herself, Akane felt superior to him, because she knew what he was thinking, who he was and who he would become, but he didn't see _her_ even in that moment. Didn't see her, and didn't know anything about her. She felt confident, like she was in the lead in some board game, and she didn't even notice the way she started to view the world in. If she had, she would have been disgusted with herself. In that moment, however, it all appeared completely natural to her, and she politely watched him with a look that he, as naive as he was, could only interpret as compassionate.

In reality, Akane felt nothing but pity towards him; a pity that became laughter on her lips, "Why so quiet all of a sudden, Naruto-san?" Bringing his eyes up, the Konoha's-hero-to-be was met with a look full of visible amusement and mockery. Any other man would've been insulted, ashamed, or angry, but Naruto...

Naruto was different. Naruto was a boy who had a much better vision than most people. He could see _exactly_ what Akane was so desperately trying to hide:

Guilt and sorrow.

So he continued to act toward her the only way he knew how: directly and honestly. He asked her, "Do you really think I will go back on my word?"

"...No. No, I don't," the eighteen-year-old answered slowly.

"Good. Because I won't. And I'm still going to help you."

A small pause.

"You don't have to," the strange girl whispered, before she turned, leaving his side, and began to walk into the inn.

It wasn't a rebuke, nor a resignation, but accepting of what is; some bitter acknowledgement of unwillingness of people to help one another, of all the people, and she had counted him in them also. His words didn't make anything any easier to her, she didn't look grateful, but neither did she look suspicious of him; on the contrary, the escapee looked very collected, very calculating, intent on fighting the world alone in any case.

The sixteen-year-old boy remained in his place by the fence. As if in a dream-like state, he raised his eyes to the starry sky. "I'll still do it," he called out to her over his shoulder, "You don't have to admit anything. But I'll _definitely_ help you save Hana."

Akane momentarily paused at the doorway. There was something _binding_ in his words, binding like a smile shared on a wonderful sunny day, binding like an oath spoken on the grave of a loved one. Beneath her icy skin, Akane's blood felt warm and her heart was beating with a new energy, with a new promise, with renewed _life_. She could feel her eyes softening, the walls crumbling _just the tiniest bit_ around her, and she felt bare and open in front of him, which almost scared her.

…._Almost_ being the key word.

In the clammy darkness of the night, with her back turned to him so he couldn't see, Akane's face lit up with a soft smile. _Oh, Naruto, you idiot._

"Good night, Uzumaki-san," the kimono-dressed girl entered the inn, without turning her back even once to glance at him again. Smiling.

_(Uzumaki Naruto... May you live forever.)_

**

* * *

New background color: **_**Yellow **_**represents the color of Solar Plexus. Gives one** **a sense of personal power in the world. Blockage of it manifests as anger or a sense of victimization. It is connected to self esteem, fear of rejection, oversensitivity to criticism, self-image fears, fears of our secrets being found out, indecisiveness, mental understanding of emotional life, how we feel about ourselves and how we feel others perceive us. This is the area of the personality, the ego and the intellect.**

**Translation: Maximum remedium irae dilation est- The best remedy for anger is delay.**

***ama- a japanese insult, meaning 'bitch', but not the same one Sai uses with Sakura. In the series, Sai calls Sakura 'busu' which means 'a really ugly girl', which can also be translated with 'bitch'.**

****onee-san- can either be used for addressing your older sister or a close female acquaintance who's of an appropriate age to be your older sister; is also translated with 'lady' if the person is unfamiliar.**

*****Katon- Fire Style. The rest of the techniques wasn't written because Akane didn't hear it. And it's really not important anyway.**

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**The bonus question answered:**** J****ust to make this clear, **** Akane ****does not**** have a Multiple ****Personality**** Disorder. ****T****he closest that anyone had gotten to correctly answering this question is **Kasumi9-9** , so be sure to read her review****-**** if you are curious, of course. ****Only a few corrections: I wouldn't call them 'Inner' and 'Outer' Akane, as it isn't the same concept as it was with Sakura.**** Those two 'personalities' aren't so sharply divided- as you can see, they are both mocking and sarcastic, ****as is Akane herself,**** but they represent ****her ****optimistic and pessimistic side. At the beginning of the story, it was said that the OC Akane was an optimist, and the pessimistic side of her only poked its head when in a seriously dangerous situation. Then, Akane started to grow bitter and weak, hushing down that side of herself. Now the sides have changed: the pessimistic one is on the surface, while the more gentle one is locked away, as Kasumi9-9 splendidly said, acting as her conscience. ****Congratulations once again, Kasumi, for analyzing this so thoroughly. ;)**

**Don't forget to review: I would very much appreciate your opinion on what do you think about the scene with Naruto and Akane. It's so difficult for me to write good characters, as I'm not really used to it... especially after writing the Sound trio. -.-**

**Till the next chapter, people.**


	25. Naturam frenare potest

**Chapter twenty-five:**

**Naturam frenare potest, sed vincere numquam**

**A/N: Another long-ish chapter, just for you guys. Thank you all for more than 300 reviews, and hope you'll proceed to follow the story with equal interest. After all, there's still a long way for us to go. ;) I also wanted to use this opportunity to give a big thanks to my new beta,_ Nevervana,_ a very brave person who put up with my grammar mistakes and awkward sentence structures. Let's all give her a hand! *claps enthusiastically* ^_^**

_**IMPORTANT:**_** All the information concerning this fic ****(including when the next chapter is going to be updated)**** is displayed on my profile page, so check it out once in a while. ;) Now, let the **_**'Konoha arc'**_** begin!**

* * *

"Home sweet home!" Naruto exclaimed at the first sight of his beloved village.

_Such fierce enthusiasm. _Akane couldn't help but let a small smile cross her features. It was just like she had imagined it, which was, considering the history of her misgivings, a relief by itself. The abnormally tall two-winged door towered over them as they approached it, appearing safe and strong. The whole image left a magnificent impression of wealth and power on the girl, who had by now grown accustomed to plain village life. On its surface stood giant, bold signs in hiragana, the bright red paint contrasting starkly on the pale-green color beneath. 'A' on the left, 'N' on the right wing of the gate, she read. Akane felt utterly strange- she had never paid any attention to these 'scribblings' back when she had watched the series, and now reading them came completely natural to her... even though she still didn't know what they stood for: 'an' wasn't any word in Japanese she knew.

The day was warm and the air smelled of the last, rotten fruits and of slowly decaying summer. The sun beat persistently on the tops of their heads. The clouds seemed to have cowered at the edges of the sky under its tyranny. In spite of all inconveniences Akane stoically endured, hurrying towards the Konoha gates with fervor.

As they came closer, she could now see how the orange tiles of the gate grew red-hot, shimmering with heat. The green paint peeled from the doors in some places, cracked, dry from sun and time. No sooner had the Leaf ninja and she finally stepped onto the paved metallic-silvery entrance than she felt a painful itch on the skin of her soles: her zori footwear were definitely not designed for long travels, and they angrily pinched her feet in revenge for all the forced miles.

"It's your own fault, ya know," Naruto teased her, noticing her discomfort by the discreet little jumps she made as they walked, "It's because you're too proud and lady-like, Akane-chan. Yamato-taichou, Sai and I offered to carry you- if you had just went along with it, we would have arrived here much quicker."

Slightly annoyed with him, but feeling unusually relaxed, the eighteen-year-old couldn't help but tease back, "Oh no, I couldn't possibly let you carry me, Naruto-san, that would've been inconsiderate of me. I couldn't let you take such a burden on your frail, little hands - I'm just a gentleman like that."

Naruto squinted at her for a minute, clearly turning her words over in his mind. Sakura put her hand over her mouth, but a small giggle manage to escape through her fingers. A few silent seconds ticked by.

. . .

"...Wait a minute."

. . .

Several more.

. . .

And then the light-bulb finally switched on in his head and Naruto pointed his finger accusingly at her, "Waaaait. Did you just say that I'm-!"

"More of a 'lady' than Sakura-san or I am, correct," she confirmed, a smirk set at her lips. Sakura exploded into full-blown laughter at this point, while Sai tried to grasp the meaning of their strange conversation with an apparent effort. Yamato merely shifted his look up to the sky in a motion that seemed to say_ 'teenagers…'_

The blond boy was flabbergasted, "What? What do you mean by-"

"Hey, Naruto!" shouted someone, "And Yamato-san! Long time no see. Finally back from the mission, huh?"

"Took you guys some time," two men in matching green vests waved at them as they passed the small station on their left. A few unusual details to the side, like a smudge of powdered sugar on one's cheek and bags under the other's eyes, the eighteen-year-old instantly recognized them as the guards who appeared throughout the series. Though she couldn't _for the world_ remember their names... or their significance for that matter...

"Hello Izumo-san! Kotetsu-san!" _Oh yes, that was it! _Sakura waved back at them, "How were things here?"

"Oh, Sakura-san," the one with the bandage on his nose replied, "Nothing much, nothing much. Pretty boring these days an' all..."

"Yeah, Kotetsu here's getting lazy..." the other one, obviously Izumo, poked his friend who in return made a fake-angry face, "...again." The whole exchange was relaxed, joking, and Akane listened to them chat away with an odd feeling to her stomach. She had only passed the gate of Konoha and the whole atmosphere was already friendly and non-threatening. It put her... at peace. That serene, lulling feeling she had craved. It was like those first moments in the sunlight, after her long months of confinement – the same flood of emotions. The same purity in the air, as if it itself was made from golden, silky patches of light.

And it… it made her feel _happy_; so happy that she almost felt like crying. It was an odd, almost frightening, but a pleasant change from the past several weeks. For a moment the long-haired girl even felt like joining in on the casual conversation but, before she knew it, her name was being mentioned and she was listening to Yamato explain her presence.

"...yes, yes, just an ex-prisoner from Sound," he said, wrapping up the conversation expertly, "We have to go to Tsunade-sama and see what are we going to do about her. Sorry people, we're in a hurry."

"Really, this girl?" the one she now knew as Kotetsu looked at her, taking in her appearance with interest, "You must be one very lucky lady. For a civilian to have endured _that_ place..."

The other guard, Izumo, nodded his approval, winking in a friendly manner at her, "Absolutely agree. The best of luck to you."

_Luck... will have nothing to do with it,_ a drop of arrogance melted on her tongue. Relinquishing this thought quickly, as she didn't want to disturb the beautiful peace she was enjoying so much, the girl who named herself Akane did what she considered to be the most appropriate for the situation. She smiled at the two of them, so charmingly that the Kotetsu-guy's ears reddened slightly, and politely replied, "Thank you for your wishes, gentlemen."

* * *

Through the window of the Hokage's tower, Akane could see most of Konoha, with its round, cheerfully-colored buildings and thickly set tree-tops. She took her time to just gaze at it and breathe its scent, enjoying the sight of lively streets under her and the faint sound of passing children engrossed in passionate ramblings. For one of the biggest cities in that world, Konoha was neither too loud nor too quiet: the air wasn't polluted with sounds of rumbling machines, but was rather brought to life with the vibrant voices of its inhabitants.

A cat meowed shyly somewhere and a girlish squeal followed it from one of the streets. Two voices. Mumbling something beyond her hearing's reach.

The kimono-dressed girl sat in the comfortable armchair beside the glass, tapping her fingers on her knees. Her skin itched from sweat and grains of dried mud, clothes giving off an unpleasant odor, but she paid no heed whatsoever to any of it. The hallway was empty and silent. Peaceful. Calm. Only occasionally would someone pass by, steps hushed by a thick carpet, minding himself not to disturb anyone. And yet...

Even with the ideal atmosphere Akane couldn't help but feel tense. The other four had gone straight to the Hokage, Yamato informing her by the way that she would be taken to the hospital afterwards, 'just in case'. So currently she was waiting for him and the others to call her into the Hokage's office, after they had finished giving their report. They told her to wait in the hall, right in front of the room, for just a few minutes.

Minutes.

Did they have any **bloody** idea how _long_ a minute was? How cruel and unjust if spent on_ nothing_? Sixty seconds.

_...Sixty!_

Sure, the view was nice, but that was not what she was here for- she just wanted to be done with the meeting! Akane warily prepared the words in her head, the tone in which she would speak, the way she would present her deal in. It was going to be one of the most important moments of her life, she knew, because it would change _everything._ It would be her second time talking to a Legendary Sannin and, frankly, it disturbed her greatly. Her future depended on it, on that single moment when she would be brought in front of the Hokage.

_And then what should I do?_

_What should I say?_

_(Just save Hana.)_

_Save Hana, _she repeated to herself, _at all costs. Save Hana, no matter the price. _Yes, it was a chance to speak in Hana's name, a chance to finally do something right.

So.

Here she was.

Spitting her nails.

Glaring at the door, willing it to open, but then again, to stay closed as well. Anxiety took a grip on her limbs, tightened her vocal cords, put that_ irritating_ twitch in her fingers. Akane had felt apathetic for so long that she wasn't prepared for such an unexpected squeeze of suspense. She felt ridiculously nervous, like a child waiting for a very important exam: whereas she felt old when watching the Leaf shinobi, now, when left all on her own, for the first time Akane felt like a mere eighteen-year-old girl. But even that anticipation was almost sweet, because it was hopeful. And so she encouraged herself.

_You'll do fine, _she told herself, forcing her lungs to swallow as much air as they could take in, _Why are you getting so worked up over this? Acting so stupid... you should be embarrassed. You've been in worse situations._

Another meek meow came from the street under the window and once more an excited, high-pitched squeal of delight followed it. The door creaked open. She flinched.

"Akane-san," Sai poked his head outside, "They're calling you."

A few moments of passiveness. The words from the street could be heard clearly now and Akane lingered beside the window for a few more seconds.

_'Awww, it's so cute! Can I keep it Mommy? Can I? Can I?'_

Slowly, she sat up. Sai was waiting at the door, holding it open. Outside of the building, another voice, gentle and patient, was heard replying.

_'Sorry, sweetie, but it's so... filthy. It's dangerous to keep it in the house with your frail health.'_

Straightened her back.

_'No! Please, Mommy? Pleeeease? I'll give it a bath, I'll take care of it, really, I promise! It's... It's just so **alone**...'_

Cracked her fingers against one another.

_'... sorry, honey... but look how... green eyes... aren't they **scary**?' _The voices grew weaker as the pair started to walk away down the street.

_They sure are, _Akane thought, grimly. _And that's exactly why I can do this. _She closed her eyes, the same green, poisoned eyes that unnerved her _herself_, as tightly as she could, and sighed.

_I __can__ do this, _she repeated to herself. Then she thought...

_I better be able to do this._

And so the eighteen-year-old walked through the door.

* * *

It was a bloody_ interrogation._

Sitting behind a wide, luxurious desk (which put Akane at an immediate disadvantage by making it very clear that she responding to someone much superior to her) Tsunade, who was so young and pretty looking that Akane _couldn't believe_ it was an illusion, had greeted her with a polite, professional nod. She introduced her to Shizune, a fairly serious-looking young woman, who in return introduced her to the little pink pig called Ton-Ton. Ton-Ton, who was cradled in the short-haired medic's arms, oinked.

Right.

Now, imagine a_ pig_, pink, slightly hairy and the size of a football, wearing a little, red, fitting vest. Oinking to say hello.

...yes.

Akane didn't think it could get any more awkward for her either.

The members of team Kakashi remained in the room, moving to the sides, thus leaving Akane to stand in the middle of it, alone. Naruto flashed her a beaming smile (which Akane, naturally, completely ignored) while the others kept their faces carefully blank. Apparently, they were ordered not to speak, and so even Naruto took the role very seriously.

Quickly, without any further premises, it began.

Questions.

_Who are you?_

_My name is Akane, Hokage-sama. I have no surname I can remember._

_Where do you come from?_

_The small village of Futari, which is situated..._

_How did you end up working for Orochimaru?_

_I used to work in this bar with my sister Hana when one day..._

_What kind of visions?_

_I know it sounds impossible, but at night..._

_And Orochimaru agreed to this?_

_No._

_He made me dance to his own tune._

Just like with Yamato, all over again. But to the girl's chagrin, Tsunade wasn't as satisfied with the answers as the wood-user had been. It seemed that as far as the Hokage was concerned, the mere contact Akane had made with Orochimaru automatically put a sign over her head reading "DANGER" in big, flashing red letters, complete with a few exclamation marks for emphasis.

_The bastard is making my life miserable even when he's nowhere around._

More questions...

_No, I can't give any names, for the regular Sound ninjas were forbidden from speaking to me..._

In need of answers...

_Yes, my schedule consisted of telling him my prophecy first thing in the morning and then..._

To explain...

_Kabuto told me that I don't even have a chakra network, but he said..._

To describe...

_I've never seen the surgery for experiments, as I wasn't allowed to enter that particular room, but Kabuto's office..._

The woman interrupted her, often not allowing her to finish her sentences, all the while inspecting her with strong, brown eyes and nodding her head seriously and encouragingly. Honestly, Akane _couldn't stand it_. It was with great relief that she awaited the last question, when Tsunade must have found enough mercy in her heart to at least give her some time to breathe. The Hokage leaned over the table, placing her elbows on it; the motion made Akane remind herself to be on guard.

"Truth be told, Akane-san," the blond woman interlaced her fingers in front of her in a thinking manner, "When team Kakashi talked of you, at first, I thought that they had all hit their heads _good _some time during their mission..." Eyes hard and narrowed, she watched the long-haired girl over her fingers, "And even now, despite all the proof you have presented to them and myself, I still find it hard to believe that you can predict the future. After all, such power is unheard of in the modern shinobi world."

A short delay.

_The nerve! _Her mind yelled, _After all THAT she-!_

"Your doubt is understandable, Hokage-sama," Akane strained at last, stressing the honorable suffix as she gave a slight bow, "Please forgive me if my next statement is too bold: I'm not certain if he had ever told you, but if you ask your childhood friend, ex-teammate and life-long comrade, Jiraiya, he might tell you of a prophecy he himself was granted with in his youth." Straightening up, she looked confidently into the woman's eyes, "My gift may be rare, indeed, but I assure you that it is neither fake nor unique."

Tsunade retreated her hands to her sides, leaning back into the chair. "Then I suppose I _will_ ask him," she said, thoughtfully, "And you say that you have these... visions... only at night, if I'm not mistaken?"

Akane mentally picked up her own jaw from the floor._ Oh, come on! Haven't I already explained this to you? What is your problem, woman?_

_(Patience.)_

"...Yes, that's how it is," the girl lied once more evenly, careful not to blink too much even though her eyes were starting to water. Tsunade was observing her in a way that seemed to imply the warning that any unnecessary, unconscious movement might be interpreted as deceiving.

"I see. Tell me, Akane-san, what was your exact relationship with the S-ranked criminal Orochimaru again? Please elaborate once more. You may go in detail."

Suddenly, Akane had an unsettling feeling that Tsunade was simply screwing with her. Just for the heck of it.

_She is leading me in circles! What the heck is she trying to archive here?_

These people were insanely paranoid, she could tell, but did they have to remind her of that slimy snake all the time? The whole conversation seemed to be centered around him! Her bruises itched her in frustration. "As I_ already _told you," she sighed, trying not to grind her teeth, "I shared my prophecies with him in exchange for Hana's life. That's it. I did what I had to do."

"Uh-m..." a low hum, "And Hana is someone of importance to you?"

_For God's- _"I told you, yes. She is my sister."

"Tell me, Akane-san, hypothetically speaking, to what measures would you go for your sister?"

"As I told **him** then, I would do anything."

"Would you lie?"

She did a double-take, going mute.

_What..._

_...What is she getting at?_

"Another question," Tsunade continued, not even waiting for her to answer, "You said that they had never really physically hurt you, isn't that right? Then may I ask what happened to your right hand?"

Akane froze at the memory.

_'Crush it...'_

She remembered how disgraced she had felt after that. How the man she hated more than anything in the world had _ridiculed_ her! How he had made her feel so vulnerable, stupid, weak, so naive, so-

"I cut myself on some glass,_"_ she answered truthfully.

"Did Orochimaru have anything to do with it?"

_(Such detrimental pride...)_

"No."

"You're lying."

Akane inhaled a sharp, petrified breath.

_How did she-? _Tsunade was right: unlike her first answer, the second one was a lie, and this woman immediately spotted and deciphered it. _I still haven't learned to lie well enough... _ It looked like Naruto was going to say something in her defense, but one stern look from the Hokage was enough to shut him up. She gave Akane all of her attention once more, "Why did you lie to me just then, Akane-san?"

. . .

_Why?_

...She didn't know how to answer. Really, why did she automatically lie to her about it? Was it that hard for her to admit that she had been humiliated by that disgusting man? Was her pride stinging her so badly that she would sacrifice a precious opportunity for trust for it?

But she couldn't make herself say it.

"'_Do you, perhaps, wish for your freedom?"_

She just _couldn't_...

_"But let us see if you have what it takes, shall we?"_

"I..." her voice shook, "I..."

"How much of your story is true?" Tsunade accused her, tone spiked, "This only proves my suspicion. If you would lie to me about such a thing as an intentionally inflicted wound, without any plausible reason, then how can I trust anything you say? For all I know you could be Orochimaru's spy and your 'rescue' could have been a meticulously planned fraud. All the information you gave me, except maybe the last one about Jiraiya for which I'm not sure, is also information Orochimaru himself most probably already knows, so he could have easily taught you all of it."

Tsunade made a sharp motion with her hand that, on some unconscious level, Akane found blatantly provoking, "These facts to the side, none of the members of this team had seen either the girl or the guard in the Sound prison, so it is dubious if a person 'Hana' even exists. All we have is your word, and no evidence."

"Shishou," the pink-haired dared saying, "I mentioned to you that there was a pile of ash in one of the cells, of huma-"

"Sakura, I haven't asked you anything," Tsunade cut her off, "Let the 'soothsayer' speak for herself."

_That's... wrong. She got it all wrong! _So flabbergasted was Akane by the way the situation was developing in that she unintentionally raised her voice, blurting out, "Then ask Suna."

. . .

Noticing all the strange looks they were giving her, Akane quickly collected all of her wits and spoke, this time slowly, "Suna... knows of my existence. Orochimaru had used the information on the Akatsuki's attack I had given him to execute his own operation of stealing valuable forbidden techniques. However, his underdog, who was also my previous guard and one of the only two guards who knew of my ability, was caught by a Suna official. I guarantee you that this is the truth. I saw Orochimaru kill another minion in rage right in front of me for letting that happen..." her voice thinned and grew silent.

_'Doesn't it make you want to laugh, lovely?'_

_Go away. _She shuddered at the echo in her mind, clenching her fist. _This... is not going well. _The room was filled with confusion, suspicion and doubt, which blended together, swirled around in the air like in a cauldron, bubbling, just waiting to boil.

It was Shizune who broke the uncomfortable silence, informing them, "We have received regular reports from Suna since the attack, written by the Kazekage himself and his personal staff." _Gaara, _Akane thought and glanced at Naruto from the corners of her eyes. The boy listened with great concentration. "While the thievery was mentioned, there was no culprit left behind. Also, none of the reports said anything about the capture of the participants, or any other information that might point to Akane-san."

**_... what?!_**

"They... They are lying!" Akane couldn't believe her ears. What motive did _Gaara_, a character she had always respected _immensely_, have to hide such an information from the Leaf? And right after they saved his sorry-ass! Shocked, she turned to the Hokage's assistant, accusing her, "No, you're making that up to fool me! There is no way-"

"Please mind your tone when addressing Konoha's shinobi, Akane-san," the blond-haired woman warned, lowly, "If Shizune said it, then it is most certainly true."

Suddenly, the room seemed too dark even though it was perfectly sunny outside. The walls of it stretched around her, pulsating, _beating_, and she needed some time to realize that it was her own heart that shook her body, pumping hot, poisoned blood to her brain.

"Wait..." The eighteen-year-old tried again, cursing herself mentally for sounding so humble, "Please think about it. I am staying here, as I'm sure you won't allow me to leave Konoha with all the information I have on it, and that is understandable."

She took a step closer to the Hokage's desk, "So how about we make a deal? You can send a message to Suna to ask about me, and in the meantime you may test my knowledge by asking questions that Orochimaru has no way of knowing. All I'm asking is for you to send an ANBU squad to search for Hana. That's all. You must understand that I need to find her as soon as I can. _I must find her._"

"You can be assured that I will be sending a note to Suna to confirm your story, just as you can be assured that you'll have to prove your claims by sharing more information with us," Tsunade told her, tone neutral and calm, "But as for your request for the ANBU squad..."

Fiery brown eyes locked with cunning green ones.

"The answer... is _no_."

* * *

_This... can't be happening._

_(Slowly, don't overreact.) _

_She didn't just say that._

_(There must be a reason for it.)_

_No._

_(Don't judge her immediately!)_

_How... dare she!_

_(Think! You have to-!)_

Akane took as step back, feeling like she would be ill.

_Furious._

"You are..." she hissed, sudden numbness overflowing her body, "You are... not serious. You can't be serious..."

The room exploded in murmurs and voices. Naruto's loud voice dominated over the voices of his comrades who were trying to quiet him down. "Baa-chan, what are you saying!" he yelled, "Of course we'll help her! I made a promise! Why are you all-"

_(Breath in-Breath out- Breathe in- Breathe-)_

"Naruto," the woman's stern voice broke through the turmoil, "I am the Hokage, and this is the decision I've made. It is not out of spite that I'm not going to help her, but out of the simple reason that there is no way we could trace Orochimaru. Use your head! If there really is a person named Hana, then she is who knows where in the world. We have no leads, as Akane-san doesn't even know which was the last base 'the real Hana' was in, just like she doesn't know a single location of the Sound bases."

_(Slowly- Don't overreact- Calm down-)_

"I can't just send an ANBU squad in these bad times to wander aimlessly around other countries. Also, Konoha would have to present a valid reason and evidence to other countries to get their permission to conduct an investigation on their territories. It is a whole time-consuming legal process. If these requirements are not met, then the investigation cannot be executed. If what she says about Suna is also true, then we are also pushing our luck, for as hard as it is to believe, they may not be our allies anymore... "

_(You'll be alright- Everything we'll be alright-)_

The blond-haired boy stared horrified at her, throwing desperate looks at Akane, who stood in the middle of the room, rigid, silent, as if she were going to have another of those weird attacks.

"But she is- you're—!"

_(Patient- You have to be patient-)_

Tsunade finally slammed her hand on her desk, standing up, "I'm doing what's in Konoha's interest as its leader!" Shizune moved a few steps away from her superior, clenching the pig which wiggled to get out of the choking squeeze. "I would have nothing against helping Akane-san if her story is proven true, believe me. But I cannot risk sending out any more ninjas on pointless missions now that the Akatsuki is on the move! You should understand that the best, Naruto."

Lost in all that was happening around her, lost in herself, Akane stood, her eyes blank and poisonously green. The small voice whispered in her mind, but she was deaf to it. Exhaustion, grief, anger, fear, all the mad emotions mixed in her being, turning into mud in which her reason drowned.

_(You can help them! With your knowledge you can prevent deaths, and then they will help you out of gratitude. Just be-)_

_Quiet._

_I will persuade them into making the deal._

_I don't care about Konoha._

_I only need to save Hana._

As the voice of Elisa choked on the melted insanity of her mind, the one named Akane raised her green-eyed look. "How amazingly considerate you are!" she exclaimed suddenly, sarcasm staining her voice, "You certainly do know to take care of your own wishes perfectly."

"But if that is your final decision..." she added coolly, "Then you may wish this information center a farewell."

The ninjas went immediately silent. Stunned.

From outside of the tower, Akane imagined that the Hokage monument was glaring at her. The thought made her smirk.

"...What?" the Fifth Hokage queried.

The soothsayer sluggishly dragged her look between Tsunade and Shizune, starting to pace the room, an air of arrogance around her, "I give so you can give me in return. An even exchange. If you're not going to attend to my request, then there's nothing else here to talk about, is there?"

"You do understand that you are offered complete freedom inside the Konoha walls for your cooperation, Akane-san."

"And that freedom means **nothing** if I don't find Hana!" she bit back, "So no, I'm not sharing my gift with you."

Obviously seeing no other way with the unreasonable girl, Tsunade said, "If not willingly, you will be subdued and locked up in Konoha prison as-"

After everything that had happened, after seeing Konoha bathed in light and peace, Akane didn't expect to be threatened. So at this point, to their complete bewilderment, the girl started to snicker, "Is that so?"

"Well then, I guess that even that bastard Orochimaru,_ may he choke on his evil laughter_, had been more humane than you," she mocked nonchalantly, "Definitely more polite, in any case."

"You're talking to the Leaf Village's Hokage here," having been silent for the most part, Yamato was now vividly appalled with the girl's incredulous behavior, "Show some respect!"

"I give respect where respect is due."

"And when exactly did you develop this disrespectful tone for me, Akane-san?"

"I believe it was shortly after you forbade me to use it on anyone else, _dearest _Hokage," Akane smiled pleasantly, stopping in her pacing to stand directly in front of her. Face to face, two females glared daggers at each other.

The room went numb with silence.

"Here's how it is. You will not tell me what to do," the long-haired girl whispered with almost morbid calmness, "I will behave, speak and _breathe_ in whatever bloody way I want to!"

_(Never again.)_

Her stern look stopped at each one of them for the heaviest moment, before she continued in her light, cynical voice, "I have ripped and bloodied my lips _senselessly _while chewing through my previous chain. You shall _not _put another one around my neck."

_(Dogs, mad from hunger can turn into wolves.)_

There was weight on her shoulder, a hand, she realized, and when she turned around Sakura was standing behind her, disappointment evident in emerald eyes. "Akane-san... What happened to you?"

. . .

_(What **did** happen to me?)_

Something itched her on the inside, like a pimple, dangerously close to heart, but Akane was afraid of scratching it, terrified that she would bleed it. Afraid that she would touch that part of herself that she wanted so badly to suppress.

She roughly brushed off the girl's hand from her shoulder. "Kabuto taught me civility... Sasuke solitude... but Orochimaru taught me cruelty," Sakura's eyes went wide at her slippery tone, "Haven't I told you to stop speaking to me in that tone? Go on, little girl, build your castles of spun sugar, sweet on the tongue and sour in throat. Build them until you get **sick **from all the sweetness! But don't you dare talk to _me _in that voice ever again."

The medic-girl took a step back, as if physically stricken. Naruto was watching the whole exchange, eyes dilated from some intense emotion only he could name. As if... betrayed. His fist was curled around the orange fabric of his pants, and Akane thought that she saw it tremble. Sai's face was unreadable, as usual, so Akane didn't even bother with him. The tension in the room was now palpable. Outside, a flock of birds flew by the window, the fluttering of their wings creating a unique, rustling sound.

In her mind, Akane imagined that they were ravens.

Quickly getting over her initial incredulity, Tsunade regained her composure, authoritative once more, "It will be like _this_, Akane-san, and let me make myself very clear."

"Until I confirm with both of the sources you named, Jiraiya and the Kazekage, the truthfulness of your story, you will be under twenty-four-hour surveillance as a threat to Konoha. In that time you will be taken to the hospital for thorough checkup, both for your own health and for inspecting your chakra-less organism. If your claims do indeed prove to be correct then you will be free of all doubt, under the condition that you will proceed to inform us regularly of your visions. In return I will do all in my power to organize the small search party of _regular ninja_, which will investigate _only_ the few countries that give us permission. Once again, I must emphasize that the chances of finding Hana are very slim, as you are aware."

"However," the woman kept her gaze firmly fixed on the scowling civilian on the other side of the desk, "if it turns out you lied to us, then I will be left with no choice but to leave your case to the ANBU Interrogation squad. I believe that this is the scenario none of us want but, as I already said, it depends on how much we can trust you."

Putting her hand on her chin, the long-haired girl went over Tsunade's words**. **_It is the best deal I can get right now__**.**_

"I will agree to this under the condition that I'm not forced to share my knowledge with you until you get your answers from those two sources we discussed earlier," Akane said at last, gesturing with her palms-up, as a sign of frankness, "the reason being that I see no point in telling you anything if you still suspect me. What good will it do you to listen to me if you're not sure I'm a genuine soothsayer? So only after you cleanse me of all the doubt am I going to assist you with my knowledge. Does that make sense to you, Hokage-san?"

While Shizune puffed up at the suffix Akane used, Tsunade regarded it with just a slight narrowing of her eyebrows, agreeing, "Alright, then we have a deal. I will immediately send a message to Suna and try to get in contact with Jiraiya as well." She opened a drawer in her desk, touching for something inside of it, "Sakura will take you to the hospital right away to tend to any of your wounds that haven't healed yet. By the way... how are you feeling?"

Baffled by the friendly tone in which the question was spoken, Akane couldn't be rid of the sarcasm that crept into her voice, "Just _peachy_. Why?"

"Your fingers are twitching."

Abruptly looking down at her hand, the eighteen-year-old took a notice of her fingers...

...which were contorting in fast, irregular movements.

Akane remembered that it had happened earlier, during the travel, although she hadn't given it much thought. She had dismissed it as an old reflex, created by her pianist days that she missed so much. But now, when she tried to still her hand and failed, now she realized that...

...that she couldn't control it. At all.

_What is this-?_

Bringing her panicked eyes up back to Tsunade, she was met with the woman's most contemplating look, probably reserved for only medical patients. "Sakura," she took out a pile of paper from the drawer and briskly started signing them, "As soon as we finish this meeting you are going to take Akane-san to the hospital. I want you to write down all the symptoms she had had during the time she's been with you and the history of any earlier reactions. I want every single detail recorded. Also, book her a room in sector D."

Beside her, Shizune almost dropped Ton-Ton from how fast she turned around, "Tsunade-sama, do you think she-"

"It is a possibility," the older woman interrupted her, "Shizune, the staff there is perfectly capable of figuring this one out, as I believe _this_ is in their field of medicine."

"What is?" demanded Akane, clenching her hand in the other to stop it from trembling.

"Just a hunch," the world famous medic replied, passing the signed documents to her youngest student, "Don't worry yourself with it and try to get some rest when you arrive. It must have been a long and tiresome trip for you. I'll get to you about the news concerning our deal the moment I hear from Suna and Jiraiya, as we agreed."

The very moment the girl opened her mouth to object to being so _spectacularly _brushed off, Sakura took her by the hand, "It'll be fine. You can trust Tsunade-shishou with this."

"I'll... I'll come visit," even though still shaken with disbelief, it seemed that after being silent for such an extended period of time Naruto was making up for it by increasing his tone in volume, "I believe that everything you've said is true! And then after you convince Granny here and everyone else, I'm gonna help you." He marched across the room, a bit more tentatively reaching out for her. When Akane didn't move, he put a warm, calloused hand on her shoulder, not noticing a not-so-enthusiastic stare aimed at him, "We'll find Hana for you and it's a promise." Childishly honest eyes hopefully searched for something in her blank ones. "Believe it, Akane-chan!"

Turning on her heels, not even saying one word or producing a bow of courtesy, the kimono-dressed girl went for the door. Sakura looked hesitantly at all of them, as such a behavior was a grave insult to the title of the Hokage, and upon receiving a curt nod, followed the girl closely behind.

"That's just it, Naruto," Akane said over her shoulder as she grabbed the doorknob with her left hand, lingering there for a moment, distracted. Her right hand closed over its ugly, incised scars.

"I _don't_."

The door remained open as she stormed out into the hallway, refusing to look at any of their faces. Refusing to think about them and refusing to acknowledge them. But most of all, she refused to look at Naruto. Because she couldn't _bear_ to look him in the eyes.

After all, it was peace she was offering to Konoha, not trust.

Never, _never_ trust.

* * *

**Translation: Naturam frenare potest, sed vincere numquam- You can fight your nature, but you can never conquer it.**

**A/N: ...Hehe. Nothing like a bit of angst on Valentine's Day, no? Anyone? ^^'  
**

**R&R please!  
**


	26. Fide, sed qui, vide

**Chapter twenty-six:**

**Fide, sed qui, vide**

**A/N: Thank you all for 100+ favourites and 100+ alerts! Even though I've been incredibly busy, I present to you ****the longest chapter in history of TPoL****: eleven-thousand words, to be exact, so I hope you appreciate it. This chapter will answer some questions of yours, but then again, as always, pose some new questions as well. Now isn't that just evil?  
**

* * *

_Blue- screeching- no air-_-**drowning**_-_

There was ice-cold water in her eyes, her mouth, her ears, and Akane had to bite down hard on her lip to keep herself from panicking. Skinny arms flew up to shield herself. Abruptly she turned the faucet down, extinguishing the crescendo that had forcefully pushed against her face when it came gushing from the shower.

Pressing her back to the freezing concrete wall, Akane breathed harshly through her mouth. Her naked shoulders shivered at the contact, yet she pressed more against it, wet skin reddening with scratches. Coughs wracked violently through her lungs. _Dammit! _she cursed herself, _Dammit not this again! _The _stupid _water incident triggered a memory she thought she had gotten over years ago... but it looked like the fear was still swimming to the surface of her mind whenever stirred up by any unexpected, abrupt event.

That memory... of her _dying._

The memory of the day when she had almost drowned in the lake at the Valley of the End.

That day she and Hana came to this world.

_Stop thinking about it. You're alive. You didn't die then, and it wasn't that big of a deal anyway, so just stop going berserk over such a ridiculous thing as a little splash to the face!_ It was hard to reason with herself when her body wouldn't listen to her, trembling, pressing up against the wall. It took her a few anxious moments of calming herself down until she remembered how to keep her balance- which was a good thing, seeing that the last thing she needed was to slip on the tiles, hit her head on something and bleed to death in Konoha Hospital's bathroom for patients.

Finally, the girl found the strength to straighten up.

_God, I'm such an idiot. What the hell is wrong with me?_ Akane shook her head in exasperation, the strands of long damp hair hanging heavily to the sides of her face. She reached out for the faucet again, turning it on, this time carefully, slowly, and adjusted it nearer to the color red. Warm droplets showered over her bare body. She leaned down to scratch an itch on her knee. Her feet were blistered and sore, she saw, while the skin of her heels felt unusually thick. Tawny scabs crumbled from her arms, which had turned slightly pink from how hard she had scrubbed them (she had imagined that the brown, finger-shaped bruises were dirt and almost skinned herself while trying to scrub them off).

_Need to shave. _Her legs, pale and twig-like, were covered with short, dark-brown hair. _Gosh what I would do for a razor... wait, would they give me something as sharp as a razor? I can't imagine them doing so.  
_

Even while she tried to preoccupy herself with a number of trivialities, the scene of her argument with Tsunade a little over an hour ago kept repeating itself over and over in her mind like a broken record. It was during that conversation that she had realized how different Konoha really was from how she had perceived it when she'd first stepped through its shiny gates.

Was that it why she now felt so cold and threatened? Why did each and every word spoken to her by any of these people sound warped, while every silence sounded challenging? Was this world really so different, or was it she herself who had changed?

Was she truly_ that_ determined in her intentions, or just ready to resort to cruelty?

Feeling cold all over, the girl turned the handle more to the right. Hot water came pouring down her shoulders, trickling in a web-like shape down her stomach.

_Still cold._

She turned it more to the red section. Then once more.

Steam clouded the air.

_Why is it so freezing in here? !_

Akane kept increasing the water's temperature, shivering feverishly. Again. _Again._

The water was hot enough to scald now, burning down her neck. She stood in the boiling water pooled at her feet, shaking, with her arms crossed over her chest, hands clutching shoulders, nails digging into the flesh.

_Why? Why do I feel so cold-blooded on the inside, so lost and inhuman?_

Even more so than she had ever felt before...

* * *

The stethoscope was quickly put away and instead a notepad and a pen were brought out, "It doesn't _appear_ that there's anything wrong with your lungs... Have you had pneumonia recently? Struck in the chest at all? You don't have asthma or continuous breathing problems, do you?"

"No, nothing."

The woman nodded. "I see. And you've been experiencing these chest-pains for a week now?"

"Yes, that's right," the frowning girl took a glance at the woman's name-tag, impatient, "Kumiko-san, are we done already?"

The doctor put away her report on Akane's physical examination in her brand new medicine file. "With the physical, yes, almost, but you, unfortunately, are not. There are still some tests people from the med-nins department need you for, to examine your curious chakra network... " Her hand lightly twitched for a moment, "Or rather, the lack of it."

Worried eyes once more traveled to the door, behind which, they both knew, stood two dangerous-looking people in animal masks. The guards' presence seemed to unnerve not only the civilian doctors, but all the staff they had came across when they escorted Akane to her next examination. The whole treatment confused the girl. It was impossible that any of these people knew that she carried the title of a 'soothsayer', Akane thought, because it was now probably classified as a military secret or something. Furthermore, Akane wasn't wearing her expensive traditional kimono, but a regular white hospital gown, just like all the other patients. She didn't reek anymore or look half as tired as she did before, so why did heads still turn her way as she passed down the hallways? Even dr. Kumiko, a middle-aged woman with long chestnut-colored hair done in a serious bun, was polite and professional, though she appeared _nice_ compared to the others, had a wary tint to her eyes whenever she looked at the eighteen-year-old girl in front of her.

It was because her guards were ANBU, Akane guessed. These people thought that she was either a criminal, a very dangerous one at that, or an important political figure, seeing that she had the Hokage's personal unit with her. While the treatment was somewhat irritating (especially since she was practically a _nobod_y in this world) Akane found that it was oddly flattering as well.

"A bit underweight, with the height of 163 cm and weight of 45 kilos. No allergies. No heart-defects. No digestion problems. Your blood pressure is slightly lower than what is normal," the doctor went through her notes, nibbling the end of her pen, "But you said that you've always had low blood-pressure, so I doubt that is the problem... No... Even if it were something hereditary, there is no way we can find out in such a little time, since we don't have your parents' medical records..."

Akane kept quiet, looking around the room, expression darkened after a marathon of tedious check-ups of her bodily temperature, leg-reflexes, throat, eyes... Having her subtle prompt ignored, the doctor lowered her eyes to her papers again and continued, "There's nothing wrong with your lungs, so I can only conclude that the aches you've been experiencing are not of a physical nature. But with you not having a chakra network, I really have no idea how to go about this... Hopefully the next set of test will clear up the mystery for us. We also have to wait for the results of your blood tests from the lab..."

"I have already explained to Hokage-san all Kabuto had said to me about my... condition," Akane smirked ironically on the last word, the sound of her voice implying little quotes in the air. Her sudden remark came as a surprise to the woman, as it was the first Akane had spoken more than five words on her own, without having the doctor extort the answer out of her. The girl was still staring at some imaginary dot on the wall behind the older woman's shoulder. "I'm sick and tired of going from one room to another, from the dentist to the janitor, only to have you all _professionally_ conclude that there's nothing wrong with me. I'll say this once again: I am just_ fine_," cocking her head slightly to the side, she fixed her challenging look onto the medic now, "How's _that_ for a diagnosis?"

Dr. Kumiko took the pen out of her mouth. It was obvious that everything about this girl confused her: a civilian eighteen-year-old female with an attitude, guarded by ANBU, who addressed one of the most powerful people in the world, Tsunade-sama, with a common -san suffix. There was also a layer of medical concern to this confusion: Kumiko knew that while the girl's body was mostly healthy at the moment, it was physically weak and susceptible to illness. And also there was _that_...

"You have difficulties in controlling your motor functions. You call that fine? There's also an issue with those first-degree burns on your back and chest you've accidentally inflicted on yourself. Then there's the eczema on the back of your knees and on the inside of your elbows as well," Kumiko counted, flipping through the papers, "I'll prescribe you a creme you can use for it, to alleviate the ache at least for the time being, until we confirm the cause of it. It would be bad if it started to muck. Under no circumstance should you scratch it, understood?"

Akane puffed. "Easier said than done."

The medic signed on yet another piece of paper, before she put it in the file and stood up, "I think I have a pretty good idea what might be causing all of these symptoms, but because of your chakra-less organism it's better we don't jump to the conclusions. The next several tests will tell us in any case... You may proceed to the shinobi wing of the hospital and, after that is done, go for the last tests in Sector D."

"I would appreciate it if somebody actually_ told _me what this Sector D is," Akane stood up as well, straightening her gown in a bluff manner. The material felt strange, but not entirely unpleasant on her skin; however, the change of clothes made her feel unusually guarded. Even though she would never admit it, Akane ahd gotten used to silk of her kimono.

Dr. Kumiko looked at her for the tiniest second over her shoulder as she took off her lab coat to put it on the hanger in the corner of her office. She turned off the lights and walked to the door with the girl.

"Oh, Tsunade-sama didn't tell you?" she tilted her head to the side a bit, holding the door open for the girl.

"Sector D is a Mental Health Department."

* * *

The guys from the Shinobi Medic Squad were every bit as annoying as her previous doctors had been, maybe even more so. The examination went just _swimmingly_. Once again Akane found herself perforated, percolated, punctuated, permeated, and all the other P's that were out there and involved needles or other people's chakra running through her body.

To put it bluntly, it was freaky. Very, very much.

Just as she predicted, their report matched everything that Kabuto had concluded in their very first 'welcoming session'. Two different types of chakra, divided in her body, yada yada yada. Fortunately for her, Konoha's medics actually _valued_ the basic human rights and weren't as keen as Kabuto had been on force-feeding her random medications. More importantly, they weren't as creative as that good ol' fellow had been, as it didn't even_ occur_ to them to try casting a genjutsu on her. This unfortunate slip-up on their side gave Akane an advantage- now Konoha didn't have the information that she was pretty much immune to genjutsu of any kind, unless applied directly to that single knot of chakra around her temples.

Of course, it was a fun fact that Akane was intent on keeping to herself.

Taking a stroll down the corridors to her last test in the famed Sector D, Akane was so tired and bored that she took enjoyment in seeing people shuffle to the sides to let her and her 'entourage' (as she dubbed them in her mind) pass. She could heard snippets of conversation as she went by the hurrying nurses (_'Ah can't believe these people! Just don't take care of themselves!' 'I know! __Every year, at every beginning of the monsoon session...__Will they ever learn that...'_) before they would stop for a moment to just gaze at Akane's mysterious, but well-built guards.

The two male ANBU, an owl and a bear mask, were quiet most of the time, merely helping the girl orientate around the hospital, and showed the pass with the Hokage's signature, which gave Akane the privilege of going to Konoha's best specialists before other grumbling ninja, quarrelsome grannies and bouncing babies who had been waiting in queue for hours. Akane would have felt very much like a VIP if she didn't know the true motive behind it all.

Konoha's council was discussing the appearance of a 'strange soothsayer girl' in town that very moment, she took a guess, and hence wanted to have as much info on her as they could get. It was important to acquire all the useful information in twenty-four hours, before they got the reply from Suna and then if she was well-enough, again just guessing, locked her up.

_Joy..._

It was roughly eleven o'clock when the soothsayer got into the psychiatrist's office for a 'regular procedure', which Akane scoffed at, making no effort to mask her disbelief regarding the 'regularity' of it. Really now, what psychologist would have such an eager look in his eyes, as if ready to pounce at her on the first sight of any anomalism, at _eleven freaking hours in the evening_ unless he was paid overtime or, even more possibly, completely out of his mind?

So when Akane first laid eyes on Mister 'Hiya there, I'm dr. Adagawa, how're ya feeling today?' uttered in a cheerful falsetto, she decided that she definitely hated the short, red-cheeked man.

"Tell me, Akane-san," dr. Adagawa wiped the sweat from his forehead with his fluorescent-green tie, "Oh, my, isn't it hot in here? … Or is it just you, my dear?"

Her eyes bulged in disbelief, while the geezer merely chortled, "Kidding, kidding, hahaha, I'm not as young as I used to be, hahaha..."

Instinctively, Akane edged away in her chair. Seriously, was _this guy_ supposed to be diagnosing _her_ or the other way around? Cause she had done her part: the man was a pedophile. Or even worse: had the most unfortunate sense of humor in the world. End of discussion. Akane crossed her arms in her lap, patiently waiting for the midget-man to stop laughing at his own idiocy.

"Ahhh, alright then. How about we get started, huh? Oh boy, you're killin' me!" he waved his hand in the air, blissfully unaware of the eighteen-year-old glaring murderously at him over the table, "Right, right, so... Akane-san, is it?" He leaned over the table, like conspirator, for a moment his eyes flickering to the door, as if he were checking for the ANBU, "What seems to be the problem?"

The question caused the girl's eyebrows to fly up _(is this guy for real?)_, before narrowing down at him. "I'm pretty sure that it's _your_ job to figure that one out," she told him, dangling her leg under the table, "However, I'll be as kind as to make this short for you- there's nothing wrong with me. At all. It's late, Adagawa-san. It would be for the best if you just signed the papers, so we can both resign."

"Well, aren't you persuasive!" the doc seemed surprised and highly intrigued for some reason, "Yes, yes, you're definitely a charming one. Wait! I have to write that down!" With that said, he produced a hot-pink ball-pen from the little pocket on his coat and started to enthusiastically scribble on some colorful stickynotes that were anything but hospital documents.

_A clown, _the soothsayer gaped at him, shaking her head in disbelief, _this guy is a freaking clown. _

"Alrighty then," the man tapped a theatrical dot, seeming highly pleased with himself, "Now then, you didn't answer my question, Akane-san."

"What do you _want?_"

"How are you feeling?"

"Dumb question. Why do you care?"

His mouth formed a small 'o' as he gasped in a manner that resembled a lame sitcom actor. "I'm a_ psychologist_," he put a hand on his heart, as if gravely insulted, "I can ask you this all night long, girl, so how are you feeling?"

She looked at him, uninterested, "Just _great._"

"Wonderful!" the man exclaimed, rubbing his hands, "Me too! Now that _that's_ out of the way, you can tell me all the other symptoms you've had. So..." His eyes gleamed with interest, "Hear voices in your head? Have any hallucinations?"

"No," she said, curtly.

Dr. Adagawa's lips fell into a frown, as if he were genuinely sorry that she didn't have any severe mental illness. "Then... how about feeling anxious?" he offered, almost hopefully, "Or feeling depressed enough to cut your wrists?"

"No," she bit out a bit more harshly this time. This reaction seemed to lighten up the manikin's spirit, as he began to talk fast, with his hands flying out like ellipses on a windmill to emphasize certain words.

"Traumas?"

"No."

"Sexual assaults?"

Glared at him. "No."

"Nightmares?"

"No."

"Unable to sleep?"

"No."

"Wet dreams?"

She choked, positively appalled, her face twisting with shock and disgust. _Did... did this __**idiot**__ really just ask me that! _Staring at him wide-eyed, it took Akane all the self-control she had at the moment not to get up and smash the pervert's round little head against the desk when the man covered his mouth with his hand, giggling to himself. "Sorry, sorry, I was just joking. Of course, it's normal for a young woman of your age to-"

_What __**the**__** FU**__-_

"How about you learn some proper manners before you dare to... dare to even-" she hissed, too taken aback by this old man's incredulous behavior to utter a word more, "You scandalous little-!"

"Oh no, not good, not good at all," the psychologist swirled his head on his neck comically, as if his own inappropriate remark had angered him. Wailing in his own little pity-party, he let out a long, over-dramatic sigh, "No, not good at all. She doesn't like me. She doesn't wanna talk to me. I have to make her feel comfortable."

Suddenly, a huge childish smile broke on his face, as if he had just reached an epiphany. "I know! We'll stay here, talking! Yes, a little friendly gossip, no, I know, a chit-chat! Just _the two of us_, all night lon-"

"NO!" Akane almost shrieked, getting seriously freaked out, "Just! NO! N-O! Look, there's nothing wrong with me, alright? I've just had these few accidents, when my hands started to sweat and my legs gave out- "

"-because you feel nervous most of the time...?"

"Yes, yes," she confirmed, not even realizing what she was saying but _I'll be damned if I spend another minute with this __**infuriating, **__disgusting__ chunk! _"I sometimes felt that I couldn't keep it up anymore, so much was happening, and when I found out that they've taken away Hana-"

"-you've started to lose control over yourself?"

_('She gagged on the tears she __**didn't even notice**__ before, salt biting her lips, but she couldn't stop, God, she just __**COULDN'T STOP!'**__)_

"Right, but understand me, the pressure was just _too much_! I've carried this burden for so long, and those people, those _sick_ people were just too much for me to handle and-"

"-you felt so dehumanized, so belittled and embarrassed that you began to preoccupy yourself with thoughts about hurting or humiliating them back?"

_('_**KILL **him!_ she thought uncontrollably, __**KILL**__HIM_KILL**HIM**killHim_killhim_KILLhim_killhim__**KILLHIM**_**OHGODJUSTKILL**hIm_**killH**__IM-'_)

"Yes, exactly! And I know that it's all my fault, _everything_ is my fault, and-"

"-you sometimes feel like you're going numb, maybe even like you yourself are starting to rot, to be_ evil_-"

"I can't take it anymore, I just can't, it's killing me!" she heaved, running short of breath, "It's killing me how I'm so weak, how I start to panic at the simplest things, how I have these frightening flashbacks-"

"-panic... you say?"

When she brought her haggard eyes to him, dr. Adagawa was sitting calmly, a serious, calculating expression on his face. Her hands were shaking, sticky with sweat, and felt so very cold in the man's chubby, warm fingers. He smiled to her, sympathetically.

"I think," he said, his voice low, smooth, and completely different from the high, idiotically gleeful one he had greeted her with, "I think you have a type of a stress disorder, Akane-san."

. . .

He patted her hands in a fatherly manner as he let them go. Dazed, Akane hesitantly pulled them back to her lap. Dr. Adagawa, now serious and thoughtful, opened her medical file, while she watched him, mute, bewildered, heart still beating erratically in her chest. She couldn't understand what had just happened, so she continued to stare at him, waiting for him to say something inappropriate, to do something crazily eccentric, to start doing handstands, to burst out laughing at her-But he didn't do any of these things.

No, the funny-looking man merely filled out some papers in her files, disturbingly professional, before he closed it with a soft rustle. Finally, he looked up at her, eyes full of concern. "Akane-san, how are you feeling now?"

"...what did you just do?" the girl half-whispered, as if afraid to speak out-loud, "What did you- What did you find out?"

"More importantly, what _in the world,_" the chair screeched as she stood up to her feet, "do you mean by a stress disorder?"

"Please, calm yourself down, sit down, please, oh dear, don't upset yourself Akane-san," the psychologist motioned for her to take her seat again, apparently distressed by her discomfort, so she did as he asked, for his sake, slouching down in it, "I'm sorry for provoking you, but I had to make you talk. Having already been introduced to your way of behavior by Hokage-sama herself, from the moment you stepped into my office I could tell that you're a type of a person who deals with her problems by the means of suppression, so it was necessary-"

"Suppression?" Akane quickly repeated, flashing green eyes ordering him to elaborate.

"Y-Yes," the little man gulped, "You see, suppression is used by individuals who don't admit their anxiety, sometimes not even to themselves, and don't talk about their feelings, ever. They keep them carefully bottled up inside, all the while they insist on presenting themselves as calm, often even unemotional persons." A small smile, "Am I right so far?"

There was nothing she could do but stare at him in utter incredulity, anger slowly rising from the pit of her stomach. "You're wrong," Akane tried to calm herself down, unconsciously speaking in a sharp voice, "There's nothing-"

"Turning defensive is another way people like yourself confirm this trait," Adagawa continued, still speaking in that nice, comforting tone, which made her immediately shut up, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem like a tough person to faze when on guard- you're far too experienced, even at such a young age, for me to wheedle."

"I also doubt that I could win in a verbal fight against you, from what I've heard of you from the other doctors," he snickered to himself, "Yes, you're an intelligent young lady, no doubt about it. But, from my long experience (dear me, this makes me feel so old, haha) I know that intelligent, impatient young people are easily irritated by the stupidity of others, especially their elders, and they often don't know how, or just don't want, to deal with it."

Leaning back comfortably in his chair, Adagawa cheerfully patted his round stomach, "So since I saw that you wouldn't speak and describe the symptoms for yourself, I had to give you a little... push in the right direction. It worked, dontcha think? You've just given me all the material I can work with."

This was too much! _He had been acting all this time? He had counted on that I would be so vain to write him off as an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing, from the very beginning, so he could __**provoke**__ me into talking? _Her mind was a ball of yarn, constantly uncoiling and twisting, _It's ludicrous! How could I have-! He-! What kind of a psychiatrist__ **is **__he?_

Once more the plump man wiped the sweat from his face with his tie, blinking at her compassionately. "I only want to help you, Akane-san," he said, "I'm sure you'll say that you don't need help, and I admire you for that, but it is both my professional opinion and a personal wish to do so anyway."

. . .

When Akane finally spoke, her throat felt dry and painfully sore, "It's... It's alright. Just... tell me... what kind of a stress disorder?"

Apparently relieved by this answer, dr. Adagawa flipped through a few pages in the folder, unnecessarily quickly, as if afraid that she would change her attitude and turn antagonistic in a moment or two. "When I compare the examination made by dr. Kumiko-san and Sakura-san's previous brief check-up," she noticed distantly that he said Sakura's name with a certain reverence, like he was talking about a celebrity or something, "it clearly shows that what you've been experiencing are episodes of panic attacks, known in psychology as Panic Anxiety. It fits perfectly, because it explains your increased heart-beat, flushing and sweating, even though your organism is, physically, more or less, in a good shape. Sakura-san had also noticed that you were in a kind of a 'daze' on your trip to Konoha, as your attention was narrowed and you frequently seemed disoriented. It explains everything."

"The results from the lab show high secretion of katekouraamin* in urine," she made a face, failing to translate, but the old man didn't notice, "and korutisouru* in your blood is high. One of the possible outward symptoms is eczema, which you have, and the timing of its appearance fits perfectly as well, so there's no doubt about it."

He pressed his stubby finger to the paper, tracing some sentence with the nail. "You are easily startled by abrupt noises or movements, feel 'on edge' most of the time with episodes of emotional numbness, recurring flashbacks, and, pardon me, angry outbursts. You obviously have strong feelings of guilt, worry and helplessness, with the addition of morbid hatred towards the perpetrator. All of these, combined with the feeling of defilement, are symptoms of Victimization."

"All of these together, panic anxiety, victimization and physiology issues, can be rounded up in three words: Acute stress disorder," Adagawa finished, holding up three fingers for her to see. His cheeks were redder than they'd ever been from saying it all in two breaths, but a self-satisfied was firmly plastered smile on his face nevertheless. "Did you get all of that?"

Obviously expecting an applause, there was nothing that could have surprised him more than when the girl shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly at him. "It's true, I've been under a lot of stress lately," she admitted, unimpressed, "It doesn't take a genius to puzzle that one out, especially if you had the insight to my personal history. So, I just need some rest, and I'll be back to my usual self in no time."

"I'm afraid you don't understand the full severity of this, Akane-san," the psychiatrist tried again, lowering his voice in a more convincing, stern one, "You see, this Acute stress disorder usually lasts for two or three days after the trauma, but in your case it has already been a week. I can only guess how much your condition has worsened since you've been in Konoha, what with those ANBU following you around and whatnot... There is a good chance, no, a very high possibility, from what I've seen so far, that your Anxiety disorder has already started to evolve... into a much more severe, Post-traumatic stress syndrome. If these symptoms of yours last for more than a month, it won't be good for you, no, not good at all."

The girl sat with her hands in her lap, squeezing the hems of her gown between fingers. The point of his entire speech finally settled in. She was ill.

She was _mentally_ ill.

It was the strangest thought that had ever crossed her mind. When one says to himself _I am mentally ill _and tries to accept it, it is the most surreal feeling in the world_._ It was inconceivable! She couldn't believe something like_ this _was actually happening to her. Here she was, finally free from the darkness and mockery and fear, but talking to a shrink! They were still inside of her head, _the bastards, _messing with her mind, her decisions, her whole damned body! Admitting to this illness... was like admitting **defeat **to them. They had managed to break her, they had managed to corrupt her and-

No...

No, she was feeling fine. She was. Really. She told herself that she was fine and,_ damn it all, I'll be fine as long as I need to be, for as long as it takes!_ She couldn't stop now, defeated by something as _abstract _as stress. She just couldn't. She could deal with it, definitely. By herself, yes, completely by herself. She came _so far..._

"Ain't this just lovely," her lips stretched into an odd smile, but uneasiness filled her eyes; her fingers were still trembling, "Great, Adagawa-san, you've done a splendid job. Congratulations on managing to fool me." Standing up, slowly, gracefully, Akane produced a small bow of courtesy for him, "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll think I'll go get some sleep."

The doctor stood up as well, nodding his permission. He put down his pen, which rolled around the table, "A great idea! It really is pretty late. Time flies by when you're having fun, hahaha, don't you agree? I'll prescribe you some medications and we'll start with your therapy first thing in the-"

"I don't think so."

The door handle clicked. Adagawa raised his eyes from the documents to the girl. She was already standing by the exit, with her back turned to him.

"No?" he asked, blinking in bafflement, "Dear girl, what is it the matter now? It's free of charge, you know, and I guarantee you that I'll do all in my power-"

"I don't want to see you ever again."

The pink ballpen slipped from the edge of the table to the floor with a noisy 'tap'.

Both of them were silent.

The first to break it was Akane.

"Thank you for taking your time to diagnose me. Thank you. But I will not participate in any therapies," she spoke calmly over her shoulder, in a disturbingly relaxed tone, "I can fight it myself. I know I can. Medications are out of the question as well." Nausea bubbled in her throat at the memory of the last pill she had unwillingly taken.

"It will help you get better," thick, log-like legs circled the table to approach her, "Don't you see what you're doing right now? You're going to make yourself worse! Akane-san, let us treat you. What is it that you're afraid of?"

The door smashed shut behind her, wordlessly.

* * *

_I'm afraid of you trying to help me only to find out... that I'm not better. That I __**can't be**__ better, because I'm just a bitter, angry and repulsive person by nature, to the very core. __**That**__ is who I am, who I've turned into. It's disgusting, but that is who I __**have to be **__here. To survive. To digest all that I have to do for my goals._

_This illness... is my only excuse._

_Don't rid me of it, let me cling to it, please. My legs hurt so much, I'll fall. Let me have that one, miserable excuse for my deeds._

_... this is irrational. Gosh, this is so irrational, you wouldn't understand even if I told you this. It's insane, I know, but that's how it is. I can't tell you._

_Please._

_Please, don't make me._

* * *

As she walked through the hallway, deep in thought, ANBU left and right of her, Akane suddenly felt like she was being watched (which was, come to think of it, a ridiculous feeling really, when she was obviously being scrutinized by every single person in the corridor, so why should this feel special?). There were only few patients here and there, and a small group of young uniformed nurses giggling around some tall, handsome boy who was amusing them. Passing by the group Akane caught his gray-eyed look.

Then the ANBU and she turned around the corner, and she forgot all about it.

* * *

"You'll be put up for the night in Sector A till we get your room ready," the middle-aged, irritable-looking woman snapped at her with each new word.

She was currently leading the strange girl through the department with patients who were resting up, just waiting to be released. That disconcerting smell of the hospital, of flues and cough-syrup, was minimal here, much to Akane's relief. It was a quiet, light-blue-colored hallway, with most of the rooms' habitants already sound asleep. The woman's high-heels clicked loudly against the floor, but the 'Pissy nurse' (as Akane addressed the woman in her head) didn't pay attention to it. She had shooed Akane's ANBU guards who, as if afraid of the wrath of the Pissy nurse, immediately skedaddled, probably to get to their posts somewhere in front of the hospital's windows.

"Here we are, we set you up a spare bed in this one," the sour-faced woman pushed the door with her elbow, "I hope you're not one of those shy, goody-goody girls, cause you're gonna have to share your room with one of the male patients from the shinobi department tonight. There's a curtain between your beds, but I doubt you'll need it. This guy's a reeeeal gentleman." Her long, dry cheeks blushed a bit, but the woman tried to cover it up by angrily ushering the girl in, "So I don't wanna hear you complaining, you understand? We'll allocate you a different room tomorrow."

The soothsayer said nothing, letting the nurse have her way, and entered without a complaint. Really now, as if she was in a mood for socializing with anybody, less alone some old, ugly, annoying-

"Yo."

. . .

_...this voice._

Measuring the room up in a single look (a window, night-table, pot with a purple flower, memo-pad, two yellow-framed beds) Akane snapped her gaze directly to her roommate. It was with a masochistic mixture of glee and horror, sugarcoated with shock, that she raised her eyes to gawk at a good-natured, curly-eyed greeting.

_Hatake... Kakashi._

Messy, shockingly white hair. Dark-blue elastic mask pressing to the skin, outlining his features. Thin, fleshy scar running across his right eye. Long, muscular arms spread in front of him, fingers touching the edges of orange covers. The contour of his strong, lithe-built body under the sheets...

Before her look could venture any further, Akane took a hold of herself and switched her gaze to her own bed as naturally as she could, praying that she wasn't one of those girls who blushed.

It was THE Hatake Kakashi.

In a bed.

In skin-tight clothing.

There was a distant echo of a teenage girl in her mind who screamed '_Shit shit shit SHIT why the hell are __**you**__ in a colorless, tent-like hospital gown in a moment like this!' _but she quickly hushed it down, biting down on the inside of her cheek. _What a stupid thought_, she immediately chided herself. The Pissy Nurse was saying something to her, or to him, she wasn't sure, but it was too _damn_ hard to concentrate with all that blood rushing to her head. _Get a hold of yourself! _She mentally bitch-slapped herself_,_ harder with each passing second of just staring dumbly at the wall, _It's just a man. A really, really nice looking man, but just a man. No, think of him like a regular human being. Think of him like... _

Suddenly, the alarm in her mind went off.

Breath caught in her throat.

Her own ribs pierced her lungs.

And in the next moment, poisonously green eyes were narrowing in suspicion.

_...Hatake Kakashi: the former ANBU captain._

. . .

Coincidence?

Akane thought not.

When she examined him again, it was with increased, sharpened caution. _They're putting me in this room intentionally, _her mind did a quick analysis of the situation,_ as a test, to confirm my 'gift' or just to 'friendly' interrogate me. I don't know, but there's no doubt that I'm sharing a room with Kakashi for a good reason... _Discreetly, she threw a glance at him beneath her eyelashes. One of the ninja's eyes was peering at her curiously, while the other _(the one with the sharingan, _she reminded herself) was tightly shut.

"...you understand all of this?"

The nurse's shrill voice shook the soothsayer from her contemplation-session.

"Yes, I sure do," she confirmed _whatever_, climbing into the bed. The huge white feather-pillow felt wonderful on her injured skin as she melted into it. _I understand perfectly what's going on here._

The Pissy-Nurse, satisfied with the girl's impromptu answer, started to coo around the man in the other bed (_Is there anything you need Hatake-san? Anything at all?_) When Kakashi modestly pointed out that she had already given him all the juice and chocolates he could eat, the woman finally gave up. She bid them an unusually polite good-night and clicked away in her 2-inch heels.

. . .

And so they were left alone.

In absolute quiet.

Akane didn't dare turn to look at the ninja in the other bed, so she kept staring in front of her like a doll, unmoving and stiff. The wall opposite of their beds (which were placed parallel, one beside the other, on the distance of barely a meter and a half) was blank, greasy-green and completely uninteresting. So instead she opted to count squares on the ceiling.

A flip of a page rustled through the silence.

She flinched.

_This is __**so **__awkward..._

The poor girl couldn't believe that there would come the day when she would be sitting right beside her guilty anime-crush... and have to completely _ignore_ him. If she had believed in Fate and had a reasonably-sized stick, she would have beat it with it _mercilessly_. But now, there was a paranoid part of her that kept reminding her of the fact that Kakashi was here on a mission- on a mission that could be dangerous for her. She knew that he would probably try to get into a conversation with her soon enough: it was a thought that both made her heartbeat double in excitement and the hairs on her arms stand up in horror. So Akane kept quiet till that dreadful moment, counting on her wits to get her out of any unpleasant situation.

But silence yawned and stretched around them...

It was impossible to distinguish if it was seconds or minutes before Kakashi finally spoke to her, without lifting his eyes from the book. "Chakra depletion because of an overuse of a technique," his voice, sinfully smooth, lazy and relaxed, stroked her ear-shell, "That's what got me."

_Be calm. _Akane kept mute, as if she didn't hear him at all, suddenly developing an obsessive interest in twiddling her thumbs.

"What about you?" Kakashi prompted again, a friendly note brightening his voice.

Alas, he was cleverly ignored once more. Akane chewed on her bottom lip, to keep her mouth from popping open. _Even if I don't answer him now he's not gonna give up... Knowing him, he'll try any other approach- he' may even come out in the open. How should I react then?_

"My name is Kakashi by the way," the white-haired shinobi introduced himself politely, not turning to her but instead still absorbing the contents of the book she _knew_ was Icha-Icha Paradise.

. . .

Another silence.

Another perversion-filled page flicked, like a tick of the clock.

Akane merely produced a small cough, acting as if he weren't even there. _There's no point in this,_ she thought, for once getting irritated by his oh-so-charming persistence, _I'm__** so**__ not in a mood for sneaky games. If this charade goes any further, I'll have to get a step ahead of him.._.

Even if it _were_ Kakashi, one of her favorite characters of all time, Akane couldn't help but feel a slight_ repulsion_ towards him for some reason. The unexpected sensation confused her. Bue she knew she couldn't trust him, that this was all a ploy, and that all he had for her back was nothing but suspicion. Soon, as she had predicted, a deep sigh came from the silver-haired male on her right, and he was addressing her once again, not discouraged at all by her silent treatment, "Sorry if I'm bothering you, Miss, but it's terribly boring here and I was just wondering if-"

"Tsunade-san sure treats her ANBU well, doesn't she, Hatake-san?" Akane spoke up then, voice carefully calm and flat, "Instead of making them perch in the treetops outside of my window, they gave you a fluffy pillow and a box of juice gratis to suck on while on the job."

. . .

The blunt remark took him by surprise, causing him to put down the orange book to his lap to look at her. Black. Green. Their eyes met for the first time. Akane found herself peculiarly calm as she waited for his response.

"Certainly," Kakashi replied after a few seconds of delay in a normal voice, as if they were just continuing a familiar conversation they had already had many times, "Tsunade-sama has taken best care of me ever since I started to use the risky Mangekyo. I suppose you know what that is also... Akane-san?"

Gee, when he said her name like that, before even being formerly introduced, Akane totally felt like a superstar. Or at least the part when one is analyzed and stalked all the time...

"Of course I do,_" _she confirmed, taking his game head-on, "Mangekyo sharingan, the developed stage of the sharingan in your left eye. But instead of beating around the bush and flaunting our knowledge about each other, let us be frank, Hatake-san._"_

His eyes acquired a penetrative look in them even as his shoulders shrugged casually, "I don't see why not."

"Great. Then let me be perfectly clear that I'm not going to tell you a thing until your_ precious Hokage_," she said the last two words with a fresh dosage of sarcasm, "assists me in return. As was the deal, if you'll care to remind her. But I do sincerely hope that I get some 'soothsayer' points for recognizing you as a former ANBU captain, Hatake Kakashi, the sharingan user."

"You could've gotten all that information from your Sound house-mates, or from any decently educated ninja in the world," the white-haired man pointed out. "There's also a pretty penny on my head amongst the bounty-hunters, I'm afraid," he then added, slightly jokingly.

"But do any of them know about your recently developed Mangekyo? Or had the time to encounter it, since this was the first time you used it in a fight and it got you in the hospital?" the girl countered at once, nonchalantly.

She couldn't suppress her displeasure with the way he had talked to her, "And pardon me, but I cannot overlook your comment: do you really think that I had nostalgic chats over tea and crumpets in Sound with any of those three? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but we weren't exactly pals."

Once more, she was reminded of why she had always had such great respect for Kakashi. It was amazing how his face could be downright goofy in one moment and then go frighteningly serious in the other. "If that was the case, can you answer something for me then? It bothers me," he said now, a bit more quieter, "this little inconsistency in the whole story."

Akane looked at him in alarm, "What are you talking about?"

"If going by my team's report, why didn't my former student, Sasuke, try to help Orochimaru and Kabuto retrieve you while they rescued you?"

... the unexpected sentence struck her like a fork of lightning.

"_Get her."_

_"Yamato-taichou, Orochimaru! Orochimaru and Kabuto are-!"_

The memories of that whole event unfolded in front of her eyes in flashes. As she stared at Kakashi, Akane was suddenly at a loss of words. The question he had just asked... had never occurred to her before.

_He... He's right!_

_Why didn't Sasuke give chase after me on that day? He might act disrespectful towards Orochimaru but he wouldn't disobey such a simple task without a good reason..._ A mish-mash of thoughts flooded her mind. _Actually, if Sasuke had helped them, there's no doubt that Konoha's team would have been forced to leave me behind, and I wouldn't have been able to escape at all!_

Akane couldn't believe that she didn't ask herself this earlier, that she completely overlooked this fact. The last time she saw Sasuke was when he was about to do that technique of his and Orochimaru stopped him. And that was all he did.

_Sasuke had stayed back that day on his own... Why?_

_Did he..._

_Could it be possible that the selfish bastard intentionally let me escape?_

_What? Sasuke? No way! Why would he do that anyway?_

_There must be a reason...  
_

She didn't know what to think. Kakashi's out of the blue question caught her unprepared. In the end, she chose to tell him what she knew.

Which was, apparently, nothing.

"I don't know," Akane said honestly, "Trust me when I tell you this, that I have no idea. I've never even thought about it before you've mentioned it just now. I'm as confused as you are." "You are very sharp to have noticed that detail at all," she decided to commend him, sincere.

Instead of insisting on her to answer him or accuse her of lying, Kakashi merely sighed, leaning back into his pillow. His eyes traveled to the ceiling. Needless to say, the easy withdrawal was not a reaction she had anticipated. In that one moment, his whole posture, for some reason... Hatake Kakashi looked like he was in grieving.

Much to her chagrin, Akane noticed that her own eyes were starting to drop from weariness. Still, she gathered all the strength she could to continue the conversation with him, genuinely curious. She asked him, "Why did you ask, Hatake-san?"

. . .

It took him longer than she thought it would to reply to her.

"Ever since my students swore they would find Sasuke, I've been dreading _what_ they would find," Kakashi finally said as he turned off the light on the side of his bed. Instead, a soft night-lamp twinkled in the dark. "They've come back from one encounter with him beaten and broken, but still strong-spirited as ever. But sometimes I can't help but wonder... is it worth it?"

The blue light spread over his mask at irregular angles, making it seem darker than ever before, "Does Sasuke still possess that part of his being that can harbor compassion? I need to know. So if he had really helped you of his own free will, then I can tell Naruto that there is still some hope for Sasuke and _not_ be lying to him."

"Which is why I want you to tell me about Sasuke as _you_ had come to know him," he finished, a faint red glow peeking from beneath his left eye in the dark, "Since I am not sure that I would recognize him anymore."

Weight came down on her chest, squeezing her lungs, and Akane found herself incapable of speech. She listened to this confession, a confession that this whole bizarre set of circumstances accidentally brought upon them. It was a peak to the side to Kakashi she had never known through the series before, but it all made so much sense; for the first time Akane could see what Hatake Kakashi's thoughts on his ex-student were. What she found was guilt and a sense of giving up.

Akane wasn't sure anymore she felt comfortable in a situation like this; that she had ever wanted something like this to happen to her. She didn't want to have this kind of a conversation with Kakashi. Hell, she wasn't sure herself of Sasuke's motivation that time, so what did Kakashi want her to say? She knew that Sasuke would turn into one of the main antagonists in the near future, so what should she say to his _former_ _teacher_? She couldn't tell them all to just give up on him, because it would change the story and thus render her knowledge useless. She couldn't tell them Sasuke was still 'on the light side', because that would be just plain lying.

But Kakashi wanted, no, he needed that lie. It is an axiom: people want to hear that encouraging, false 'everything will be alright' line. The question she was faced with was: should she lie to console another? A lie itself shouldn't be a problem, for Akane was used to its presence in her life, but... Gosh, she had already lied too much. No, she didn't want to lie_ for_ these people. Not for them, not for anybody. It wasn't her place. She wanted _nothing _to do with them! Selfish, angry thoughts scratched the soft walls of her brain, and she struggled to push them back, struggled not to scream out _Why should I tell you anything?_

_(Lie to him. Tell him everything's gonna be alright.)_

"You're asking too much. I don't know, Hatake-san," she shook her head, declining, "I have no idea what Sasuke truly is or will be like, nor if you should all give up on him. As far as I'm concerned, Uchiha Sasuke is just a confused, vengeance-oriented boy."

. . .

Kakashi kept quiet, faceless in the blue, sharp darkness around them. "So it's like that..."

Sheets ruffled, the bed creaked. Without a word more, he turned his back to her as he lay on his side. The patterned ANBU tattoo on his left shoulder looked like a dark red smudge of blood in the weak lighting. "Good night then, Akane-san."

_And so this was my magnificent conversation with Hatake Kakashi... _With a needlessly strong jerk she pulled the gray curtain in between their beds._ Epic. _Turning to her side as well, Akane angrily dug her nose into the pillow. The comfy, pleasant smell of the detergent irritated her and all the young girl wished for in that moment was a mangy futon and rotting planks of her room in Futari. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to speak with these people. She didn't want to be like this, she didn't want to do this anymore. She didn't want to be responsible for everything and everyone. She just wanted a minute of true, peaceful sleep, to cancel out her thoughts, to let the darkness pour over her brain and extinguish the unbearable ignition.

In the end, she just wanted to go _home._

Less and less could be heard the careful steps of nurses and assistants on rubber coverings in the hall. The artificial light appeared turquoise on the green walls, making the room look like it was underwater. Shuddering, Akane pulled the covers up to her chin. It would be a long night, in which the eighteen-year-old concentrated on mimicking the sound of the man's breathing, to pretend that she was asleep. However, she had an unsettling feeling that...

Kakashi wasn't sleeping either.

No, she was certain of it. He was observing her, hawkishly, through the dark and the curtain in between them. Somewhere behind her back she could feel a bloodied, red eye following her every movement. Wide awake with suspicion. With distaste. But the strange thing was...

Akane didn't mind at all.

* * *

Yellow haze. A sickly feeling in her stomach.

The sudden bright light slapped her in the face.

"You lied to us!" a familiar female voice boomed somewhere above her. Akane tensed and tried to shield her eyes from the light, when strong hands straightened her up in the bed, not at all gently, shaking her awake.

"We've gotten the letter from Suna," Tsunade spoke again as she pulled back, sizing the girl up with a look of antipathy, "Your story does not check out, Akane-san. Did you think that we are stupid? That you would find a way to get out of the hospital before we could get to you?"

"I've given you a _chance!" _the woman's voice turned even more accusing, too rough for the girl's ears clogged from sleep,_ "_I would have kept my word and helped you, if only you had decided to be honest with us and cooperate. Now because of your_ pointless lying_ you'll have to face the consequences. I do hope you knew what you were doing when you tried to challenge Konoha's government..."

Akane shook her head vigorously to get the sleepiness out of her eyes, staring dumbly at the woman in front of her. Tsunade was still in her regular clothing, as she had probably been waiting the whole day for the reply from Suna. Her eyes were awake and sparkling with anger. Two ANBU came into the room after her, followed by the nurse on duty who was shocked by the Hokage herself springing into the patients' room, at three in the morning, loud and puffing like a rhino. "Hokage-sama, this girl needs to rest and-"

"Leave!" one command and the poor nurse was running out of the room like a headless chicken. The ANBU with a mask of a bear started to say something to his boss, but the blond-woman merely looked at him and the mask went silent. By that time Akane had gathered her senses, and could feel her temper already kicking in...

Kakashi tried to rise from the bed, "Hokage-sama, what-"

"What are you talking about?" the soothsayer bit out, "Doesn't check out? I cannot believe this! Listen, it is not possible. I've _seen_ it: Orochimaru had received this information right in front of my very eyes! One of the Sand's officials knows about me, I'm sure of it!"

"I have the proof right here: a letter signed by all of Sand's officials and people on higher government functions, including _the Kazekage's own _brother and sister,_ swearing_ that this information has never reached Suna, with attachment of the copies of all the confidential documents filled out in Suna in the past three weeks," Tsunade threw a small stack of paper to the bed and Akane straitened up in alarm.

_. . ._

_What..._

_What in the world's happening here? ! _The eighteen-year-old found it impossible to keep up anymore. Nothing made any sense! But here was Tsunade, waving the evidence of her 'collusion' in front of her nose!

"There is no way Suna would go so far if they were truly blameworthy," the Hokage said continued in a neutral, official voice, "They are also calling us forward to take legal action for the libel. They suggest we trial you for raising unjustified suspicion between our countries."

"So what are you going to do?" Akane asked, injecting spite in her voice to prevent it from trembling. Her mind was a whirlpool of doubt, shock and confusion, but she didn't let one muscle move on her face.

"I will do what I had already told you would happen if you insisted on making this difficult," Tsunade squeezed her hand into a fist, but her expression remained firm and strict, "You are going to be interrogated by the Konoha ANBU Torture and Interrogation Force tomorrow. Yes, even in your condition. And the only one you have to blame for this is yourself."

The lump in her throat choked her.

"Somebody will come to pick you up in the morning. Learn that trust is _earned,_ little girl, and you've betrayed what little trust I had in you. " The Hokage and her guards were starting to walk away, while Akane sat, petrified, unsure what to think. Tsunade's words buzzed in her ears like a swarm of bees, weltered, sunk, emerged; they all had eyes, mouth, expressions, they all crooned in clear voices, breathing out shrill accusations. Thoughts, sentences wrote themselves in front of her face, in deformed, cracked letters- letters that looked like they were about to burst from concern and despair.

Her fingers were twitching again.

Her lungs heaved.

Blood pounded in her head.

"Then what about Jiraiya?" she called out quickly to them, "Was that a lie too?"

Tsunade stopped at the door. "No, you've got that one right," she said, coolly, "But Jiraiya also said that there was a possibility that this prophecy had slipped his mouth on multiple occasions when he was drunk and Orochimaru was forced to drag him home. It is possible that Orochimaru remembered it."

Too tired to argue, to rebel against all of this evidence and plausible theories, Akane fell back into her pillow. That disturbing feeling of helplessness, of not being able to control the situation, of everything **falling apart**, ignited a blaze of fury and hate in her being. A dark craving for retribution wormed its way into her heart.

And suddenly, Akane got _an idea._..

"Alright," she said, low and dangerous, "Suit yourself."

Then, in a matter of seconds, her grim expression straightened up and Akane tilted her head lightly to the side, drawling out in a bored tone, tauntingly. "But don't come crying to me when _those two _come..."

About to exit the room, the Hokage halted. "What two?"

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know..." Akane dismissed her, a triumphant edge to her smile.

Tsunade, now impatient, crossed her arms over her chest, "What are you trying to achieve now, girl?"

"Nothing," the so-called-soothsayer smiled peacefully, "Nothing at all, but I can't help it. It's just that-"

_(Don't say it! You're frightening when you say it...)_

"I _**know**_. I know so much more than you think I do," clever green eyes blinked innocently– but it was a threatening gesture all the same. "I shall allow all of you your empty suspicions and pitiful ignorance, but I want you to bear this in mind: _I will not allow you to get in my way."_

With an angry exhale and a killer of a glare, the blond-haired woman left the room. The ANBU lingered another moment or two, not knowing what they should do with themselves, but decided to take the risky path and go after their Hokage. Akane straightened up to put her hands between her knees and then pressed them together till they turned white and red and started to hurt, desperately trying to prevent them from shaking.

The lights went off once more.

The haunting blue glow filled the room.

And in the silence that had followed Tsunade's abrupt exit, a small sigh of pity came from the other bed. Kakashi turned his back to the girl for the last time.

* * *

**Translation: Fide, sed qui, vide- Trust, but take care whom**

***katekouraamin* and *korutisouru*- catecholamine and cortisol; Akane has never heard these words before, hence she couldn't understand them (after all, they are terms used in biology and medicine)**

* * *

**A/N: This chapter is boring. Seriously. The OC Adagawa (who I think is definitely my fave OC of them all ^O^) and Kakashi saved the whole thing a bit, but... There was just no way around it, it had to be written in order for this story to progress. However, my efforts SO deserve a praise, wouldn't you agree? So... how 'bout a review? :}  
**


	27. Aequam servare mentem

**Chapter twenty-seven:**

**A****equam servare mentem**

**A/N: Happy May Day to whoever celebrates it! ^_^**

**Edit: Check out the drawing for TPoL! Awesome people known as ColdFyre, Nevervana and MissFortune did ('Sound arc' and 'Leaf arc') covers for this story, so feel free to look them up! The links are on my profile. If you by any chance have a dA account also, don't be shy and give them the feedback they deserve!  
**

* * *

Somebody has dressed her.

She looks at the long peach sleeves sliding over her arms, feels the familiar touch of the silky layers over her skin. The sensation is much more pleasant than that of the grubby hospital-gown she is obliged to wear during her stay and yet... and yet there it is again: the slightest itch beneath her skin, like a tremor, that warns her how something just isn't _right _about it...

_Alright,_ she thinks, _so they brought me back the kimono from the clea__ning. But who dressed me? And why?_

The room is blurry with darkness. Only blue sparks from the night-lamp blink at her while reflecting on a mirror, like two shiny, inspective eyes.

_...mirror?_

Sure enough, there is a mirror. Tall, square, framed, hanging on the wall opposite her. A brief thought passes behind her eyes and she realizes that she hasn't seen a mirror since the one Hana bought in Futari. Curious, she throws the covers from herself and straightens up in the bed. Soon her bare feet, one, then the other, touch the cold floor. Crossing the distance between it, she squints at the dark image that appears as she gets closer and then stops a little away, the reflection mimicking the tentative motion. At first, she is disturbed by what she sees: sickly pallid cheeks, bony shoulders jutting out, a strange glint in green eyes, but the feeling quickly passes when she remembers seeing the exact same thing in the river some time ago.

_(Yes, this is you. You've changed. Face the fact.)_

_...Right._ Long hair. Pointy chin. Nothing amiss. Her eyes then travel down.

For the first time since she obtained it in the Sound, she sees and scrutinizes how the kimono looks on herself. Despite the lingering bloodstains on the collar and the fraying hems, the fabric still looks fine and of high quality. It hugs her figure handsomely, making her look unusually pretty... but in a way that she finds utterly humiliating. The soft shade of tan makes her most appealing to the eye. She looks... elegant. Sensual. And frail. Almost... _weak._ The steps she makes in it must came across as _gracious_, she frowns. The pale white of her neck must appear tempting, _alluring_ even. And that blood-red, dark obi about her rounded hips...

She undresses as quickly as her trembling hands allow her and throws the damned thing to the floor. _Disgusting. _Only the thin underlayer dresses her now. She closes her eyes as airy relief fills her lungs. Breathes. _It's over. It's over with that part of my life._ A shiver runs down her spine and she brings her arms up to provide herself a bit of comfort... when her fingers touch cloth again.

Her look snaps up to the mirror. In it, her reflection is _still_ dressed. The kimono is wrapped around her torso, clutching at her shoulders. _What in the...? _She drops her look down, searching the floor where she threw it, but there's nothing there.

Again, her twitching fingers clench the obi and jerk at it, unwrapping it quickly. She lets the kimono fall in a heap to her ankles, before she tears at the frail underlayer, violently, ripping it off. She doesn't care that she's standing in the middle of a public hospital room stark naked, she doesn't think about the man in the bed behind her, no, strangely, she doesn't think about anything at all. She just stares at the mirror.

But the_ blasted _thing is still there! The kimono's sticking to her body, clinging as if wet, only now... Only now she thinks it feels different. Tight. Choking. The material... the material is _burning _her!

The realization cracks her skull open. The silk is... _melting_ into her arms. The peach cloth is attaching itself to her, it's **sewing** itself into her skin!In the next moment she is scratching insanely at her arms, drunk with fear, clawing at them, _bleeding_ them, _nononononononono-!_

On the other side of the glass, her reflection stands still, watching her with detached curiosity. The kimono on the girl in the mirror is turning red with each scratch, until it's dripping with blood. The girl is smiling.

_Get if off! _She screams at her own reflection, which smiles a thin, cruel smile back, _Get it off getitTHEFUCKOFF getitoffgetitoff__**PLEASE**__JUST__**GET IT OFF!**_

Her reflection reaches out, beckoning to her. The sleeves slide off of her arms slightly, and she can catch a glimpse of glimmering, white_ scales._

...She _**freezes.**_

Breath catches in her throat.

Then she snaps, letting out a cry of frustration, anger and fear, hurling herself towards it, hammering her fists on the shiny reflective glass. The mirror burst right across the reflection-girl's eyes; the sardonic smile lingers there for another moment, before it smashes into millions of sparkling nacre pieces, and they are sharp and _everywhere _and cutting themselves into her, and she's bleeding, her whole body is _bleeding _from every single pore, burning, she thinks she's bleeding from her eyes, and the scars on her right hand are splitting open and-

* * *

Akane awoke with a sob, pressing the pillow to her face to drown a scream that was threatening to rip from her throat. Her whole body had broken out in sweat, her hands cold and clammy and her heart beating hysterically against her chest. When she finally came to her senses, the girl noticed a man standing beside her bed, mute and so serious that it frightened her. Sunlight painted itself across his dark-green flak jacket. When she looked at him, _really_ looked at him, suddenly he wasn't Hatake Kakashi in her eyes anymore, but she regarded him just like any unimportant _ninja_. "Let's go."

Outside, it was a crack of dawn.

* * *

"What can you tell me about Kabuto?"

"A creature that looked alive to itself only when surounded by corpses."

" 's that all? Orochimaru then. Tell me about him."

". . ." She ignored the question altogether.

The eye-patched man sighed heavily, which came off as rather dangerous, ''I'm starting to lose my patience, girl..."

"Oh my..." a breath, "How unfortunate for you."

The room had bare concrete walls, a metalic table and two uncomfortable chairs, both bolted to the bare concrete floor. Artificial florescent-lighting illuminated the window-less room, painting its corners in bright, eye-burning white. Upon her entrance the soothsayer was overwhelmed by the lack of texure, the lack of any kind of smells and, more importantly, the warmth. Almost twenty minutes of sweating in anticipation later, a man entered the room, tall, bulky and rough-skinned, and ordered her to put her hands on the table in front of her.

She hadn't moved them since.

While it was not a 'torture-them-till-they-talk' nor 'threaten-them-with-severe-limb-maiming' kind of interrogation, it was equally effective, she could tell. Hours (it may have been minutes, but she felt certain that it was hours) into their pointless chit-chat, Akane was freezing, achy, hungry, thirsty, and quite frankly dying to be anywhere but there. Her legs and backside had turned completely numb, her neck went stiff and painful. Even though the almost unbearable cold bit at her skin, Akane was sweating in exasperation. It worsened the eczema beneath her gown, which itched her awfully. Still, Akane held her hands firmly in front of her, instead concentrating on choosing her words and the contact she made with her interrogator's good eye. Most of it all, though, the eighteen-year-old was just terribly _tired._

It didn't pose a problem to her to answer the first one hundred trivial questions concerning her and Hana's life in Futari. It was easy enough to retell the story she had already repeated so many times that she was starting to believe in it herself. Even when the man (Ramoru, he had introduced himself, but the girl felt no need to remember it) put a file containing the background-check they did in Futari on her, Akane remained as passive as ever. The information didn't unnerve her one bit, as she felt confident that they did not find a thing. After all, Makoto-obaasama was dead, Ken would confirm her story as much as his altered memory allowed him (her eyes lit up when she heard that the old man was well and alive), while the other villagers had never had a reason to doubt 'those poor orphans with speech-impediments Makoto had taken in'. In fact, there was even a positive aspect to it all: now Hana's existence was officially confirmed, which put Akane's story back in the game.

However, whenever the eye-patched man asked her anything about her time in the Sound, the girl's answers would get scant or she would completely block. While the interrogator interpreted this as an act of concealing some crucial information, it was far from truth. In reality, Akane was only now starting to think more clearly about all that had happened to her and was thus prone to long, reflective pauses. All the while the man in front of her patiently fumed, as if he were containing himself from getting the answers out of her in a more _painful _way, but was forbidden from doing so. So when the door of the chamber screeched open, the interrogator Ramoru jumped to his feet in an almost delighted manner. "Morino-san! Finally. Have you gotten the permission to-"

"I'll take it from here."

"O-Of course, sir. I'll leave her to you then..."

Heavy, deliberatively slow footsteps followed the statement.

The unnerving sound brought her back from her reverie and Akane raised her head to stare at the leather trench-coat of the figure she had considered nothing but a figment of imagination more than two long years ago. As the tall man stepped further into the room, Akane felt the air around her go colder. The aura he was emitting... was sinister. He was entirely covered in dark cloth; his black bandana, high colar and leather gloves gave his appearance an almost malicious hue. When the man seated himself across from her and the door slammed with a _clang _behind the other interrogator, the girl had to take a long calming breath to keep from flinching at the sight of two vertical scars cut deeply into his face that still looked morbidly-fresh.

After the Sannins Orochimaru and Tsunade themselves, Morino Ibiki was no doubt the most imposing figure she had met in her life.

"I didn't allow you to move your hands, girl," was the first thing the man said to her, calmly, with a distinct note of authority to his tone that seemed frighteningly natural. Startled, her eyes fell to her trembling hands, then came back up at him. His eyes were carefully tracing lines in her file, without even bothering to look at her.

"I can't help it," she offered a small, apologetic smile, "I'm sure you already know this, but I have an Acute Disorder Syndrome."

Ibiki didn't give any outward sign that he heard her, or that he cared about what she said for that matter, merely continuing to read. Akane waited. Even though she remembered from the series that Ibiki didn't often use physical torture, the fact that she could be mentally tortured by him was equally unpleasant. Up to that point Akane had been confident in her abilities, but now, sick, exhausted and freezing, she felt her resolve wilting with every second of this man's deathly silence.

"The time spent in Sound didn't treat me well," the eighteen-year-old said to him, only so she could preoccupy herself with something other than inward panicking, "So I'm going to have to ask you to please not misinterpret some bodily reactions of mine, like the one you've just witnessed."

Predictably, Ibiki said nothing.

The silence seemed to press her from the sides and, with nothing better in mind but feeling an urge to just say _so__mething_, the young girl spoke up again. "Orochimaru's presence in my life proved quite detrimental for my health," she explained to him, "After all, he is quite a disturbing person... as you yourself know."

_Flap. _At this discreet remark, the file was finally discarded onto the table.

"Well well," Ibiki lifted his dark eyes to meet hers and she froze within their stern gaze, "And here I was told that you aren't so keen on talking to anybody. Tell me, girl, what is it that makes me a special case?"

_(Keep calm.)_

"I hope you were not expecting me to fawn and acquiesce, Morino-san," her hands twitched as she fought the urge to clench them now that she got his attention, "Let's just say that I feel... safer around you than the others." _Not really, but, _she thought darkly,_ after all, I know so much more about him. My chances of getting through with this are better with a familiar person than with some random interrogator. That is, if I manage to bring him around..._

The edges of the man's mouth twitched, splitting the scar on the left corner of his lip. "You sure are an interesting one. Adulation will get you nowhere, so stop loitering away." Then something she hadn't anticipated happened: his gloved hand disappeared into his trench-coat and the next thing she knew was that he was putting some objects on the table in between them, arranging them pedantically only centimetres from her fingers. She stared horrified at injections filled with purple liquid, things that looked like mini-crowbars, gadgets with little lightbulbs that glowed red... Her intensities tied into a knot. _He... he isn't supposed to be using any of these! _Done, Morino Ibiki leaned forward; his elbows rubbed against the metallic surface of the table. "Now then... Let us get started, shall we?"

Even the small action brought a lump to her throat. Her gaze glued to the torturing devices that almost touched the tips of her fingernails and, suppressing a shiver, Akane managed a hesitant, amiable smile, "Of course. Ask whatever you want." _He isn't... He isn't really going to...? _Scenes of her fingernails being torn out, eyeballs popped and palms stabbed through with blades flashed through her mind. Liquid panic ran through her veins. She felt as if her hand was a thin rubber glove filled with splinters, jagged and razor-sharp, and those pieces jumble together, piercing the skin. She couldn't believe she would be tortured, not really, as the eighteen-year-old still wasn't used to open-violence, especially not on her.

_(It's inhuman! It's wrong!)_

But the girl knew that such statements were absolutely ridiculous in the world of ninja, in a militaristic society such as this. In a way, with her 'gift', from the ninja's perspective she was viewed as nothing more but dangerous and powerful. And as such, she was to be regarded not as a human, but as a mere _weapon_...

"Very cooperative of you," Ibiki commented without a real trace of neither honesty nor sarcasm in his voice, "First of all, I want you to tell me about your _liaison _with Orochimaru."

Despite her anxiety, the seemingly double-meaning of the man's words was enough to make Akane's blood instantly boil. "I dare you to say that word again..." she hissed before she could stop herself, unaware of how her voice had taken a slightly threatening turn.

The man across from her watched her curiously. "Alright." Then he repeated, calmy, as if to provoke her further, "I asked you, in your relationship with Orochimaru have you-"

"You people disgust me," she spluttered through clenched teeth. Instantly her mind was turning into a boiling mass, and that mass wheezed, coagulated, dissolved, and inosculated again into a unique dense aggregation. She had had enough with their accusations and derogatory speculations! "How many times do I have to tell you that I have had nothing to do with any of them! You can all just go to-"

"Instead of jumping down my throat, why don't you listen to what I have to stay?" Ibiki stopped her outburst, calm and unfazed as ever, "I've read your gynaecologist's report and so have dropped any theories of that kind."

_..._Akane smashed her mouth shut at this. Then she sank lowly into her seat. Colour rushed to her cheeks, but she kept staring him into the eye and growling. Ignoring her childish embarrassment, the older man continued, "_Have you been on mostly good terms or bad terms with h__im_, is what I am asking you. Have you been loyal to him, or have you tried to deceive him in any way?"

The girl on the other side of the table glared at him, overpouring fury. Mostly, though, that fury was aimed inward. _Idiot_! She cursed, _Why do I repeatedly let them provoke me like this? Gotta keep calm, just ke__ep calm, gotta get my act together. Can't let him have the upper hand by making me angry... Or am I just overanalyzing this? _Collecting her wits, Akane concentrated and pushed her thoughts into the right direction till they clicked into their rightful places. She rolled her tongue in her cheek.

"Perhaps... once or twice I tried something," she carefully admitted, "Though it was foolish of me. I'm not a good liar, Morino-san, and so he saw right through me. Worse of all, Orochimaru had had Hana to bargain with. Now I'm wise enough to know that I should have never lied to him. And now that Hana's life is in Konoha's hands, you can take my word that I have no intention of lying to _you._"

She recalled the last time she had spoken with Orochimaru and almost laughed out loud. It was ironic how her last words to him were, indeed, true- the Sannin really_ was _going to die. She hadn't specified _when,_ nor did she _really _imply that it would be by the hands of 'imaginary ANBU crouching in the forest', but the fact still remained.

Only at the very end had she chosen to be perfectly honest with him.

Thinking over her words for a bit, Ibiki nodded to her. "Alright, I can tell that you're not lying this time. Keep in mind, though," he pointed down with his fingers to the devices between his elbows, "that these aren't here for decoration."

_Oh, but I know they are._ It was clear as a day to her now. The devices were lain on the table so conveniently in her view that it must have been intentional. However, if Ibiki truly wished to actually _use _any of them, they were set in the most _uncomfortable_ position under his elbows. Combined with her knowledge of how Morino Ibiki uses psychological tricks to create fear and anxiety for his victims, there was not a doubt in the soothsayer's mind about it. The slow, simmering torture had started in her head the moment he had set the sharp pieces close to her skin, but was never meant to do anything more than make her slip. _They are just for the show_. A clever move as it was, while it had really done the trick in the first ten minutes or so, it was a little less than useless now- because Akane had decided to never lie to this man again.

Nope, she was actually planning to be as honest with Morino Ibiki as one could get.

Like every moderately smart person, Akane knew that avoiding the truth wouldn't do in a situation like this. After all, a lie is far too much like a simple blandishment: easy to give, easy to figure out. Additionally, the fact that she would be lying to the head of a Shinobi Torture and Interrogation Squad rendered the action difficult to the point of being impossible. Outright lies were too dangerous to be used on this man; she had to dodge them with subtle half-truths. So, the best way to hide the truth, she realized, was to get the closest she could to it and then... just _tweak_ it a bit.

So when Ibiki started to heighten the tension in the room with questions, on the outside Akane was a peaceful image of compliance. On the inside, however...

_(Wanna play a game?)_

"Do you know who I am?" the man demanded.

"Morino Ibiki, the head of the ANBU Torture and Interrogation Department. The proctor for the written part of the last Konoha hosted Chuunin exam. Famous for being able to get any information without even directly torturing the victim." She stopped as if to think about it for a moment. "I guess I should be flattered to even be in your presence, Morino-san."

His face remained as if made out of stone, hard and firm, "Did you plan to get into Konoha before Team Kakashi found you?"

"Konoha? No, not quite, but when they did I sincerely deemed it a good thing."

"And why is that?"

"Because I had planned to manipulate your Hokage into helping me find Hana."

There were no snide remarks from Konoha's prime interrogator to accompany her honesty. For a moment, Akane thought she saw puzzlement twinkle in those black eyes. Or maybe he just thought she was stupid. The man huffed, "This is a waste of my time." "Why don't you tell me what I really want to know," his eyebrows narrowed dangerously, "How do you really acquire all that information?"

_This is it._ Akane braced herself. _Slowly. Steady._ It was the question she had been waiting for since the first moment she had stepped into the claustrophobic room. She couldn't afford to mess it up. Preparing to answer, she took a long inhale, filling her whole lungs with freezing air.

_(Let the games begin.)_

"I've already discussed this with your Hokage... The thing is, I have these weird dreams." _Which is true,_ she thought, _Recently I've had the strangest__ dreams._ "So. I can predict most of the major events of the Shinobi world, and how those events will unfold. _Aga__in, all true. _Both the first and the second sentence she said were spoken completely honestly and were one-hundred-percent veritable.

And that was the catch. Because while she was being honest when she said those sentences, they were both independent and completely unrelated. Akane had said them quickly, together, one after the another, making it sound like the second one was the _consequence_ of the first one by simply inserting the linker 'so'. In a way, Akane had manipulated her own mind into processing three true but unconnected sentences to make them come across as a coherent half-true paragraph. There was no way even an experienced interrogator could pick up that single incorrect word, which changed the whole meaning to her words, amongst the other information that needed to be thoroughly checked for truthfulness (or at least, that was what she_ hoped _for, in theory...)

And he didn't. Morino Ibiki watched her for an unusually long time, probably doing an analysis of every tremor in her voice and the truthfulness of her words, while Akane sat, sweat dropping from her forehead. Her fingers were lightly twitching. She felt sick. She felt so, so-

"You have a fever," the man casually informed her, rather randomly.

"Bluntly noticed," she mumbled, trying not to take her eyes off of his.

"Why didn't you inform Ramoru earlier?"

"The other interrogator? Would he have let me go?"

"No."

"Would you have?"

His lip twitched upward. She guessed that was a smile. "Of course not."

"Figured," the girl tiredly shrugged her shoulders and immediately regretted it; sharp pain pierced her through her whole body: shoulders, neck, back. But was it from sitting for hours in one place or some crazy ability of Ibiki's, she didn't care to know. Then, unexpectedly, Ibiki stood up. "It seems that everything you have said today is true. I haven't heard a lie leave your mouth," he said to her. _YES! YES! Thank you! _Before she could sigh in relief though, he added, politely, "But I don't believe you."

. . .

. . .

. . .

_What!_ Akane's mouth hung open, like a fish on dry land. This...

This was _insane_! She did _everything_ right! She said _everything _correctly! Why couldn't these stupid people just leave her _alone_?

"Call it... a gut-feeling," the tall man gave a little wave of his hand while he picked up his 'equipment' with the other, "Due to certain... circumstances, I'm obliged to take you back to the hospital... under restraints, of course."

Evaluating her position, Akane found that she had three options left. The first was to cause mayhem by throwing all those amazing gimcracks and lightbulbs and smashing them against the wall. While this was the best candidate to show her protest, Akane knew that it could only result in her strapped to the chair- making it out of the question. The second one was to _insist _on her story, but with a little consideration she realized that it wouldn't change a thing. They had already made their minds up not to listen to her, so what was the point? Discarding this option as well, Akane settled for the last one: to close herself off in dignified silence.

Not a word more left her mouth as Ibiki put the last piece of torture into his coat. Her lips stuck together, with spite, with disappointment, with anger. She pulled her chalk-white hands to herself, squeezing palms one in the other to get the blood flowing. But, as the man headed for the door, Akane couldn't suppress a_ 'This can all go to hell...'_ muttered bitterly under her breath, to he chose to reply. "You indeed are a strange girl, Akane-san," Ibiki called out to her lastly, before he exited through the the door, "Even_ I _can't tell if you're, genuinely, good-tempered, or to the core _bad-_tempered."

A small smirk appeared on the man's face, or maybe Akane only imagined it, "Looking forward to our next session, girl."

_Clang._

Then, she was left all alone.

* * *

When the door to her new hospital room opened and a brown-haired head poked its way into it, even a ditz could tell that the long-haired girl in the bed was_ not_ in a good mood. She was clutching her head in her fingers, teeth gritted, balancing a bowl of soup on her knees. Akane was about to tell the newcomer off with a phrase that included a noun 'thermometer' and a verb 'to shove' in the combination with 'ass', all spoken with her trademark polite smile, but the figure was already beside her bed, staring down at her. So she stared up at it back.

'It' was a boy, a smiling, good-looking boy, maybe a few years older than her, that Akane would have undoubtedly called 'handsome' were they in a different situation (that is, one giant headache less). He was cradling some folded sheets in his arms and there was a plastic plate that read 'Staff' on his chest, which made Akane conclude that he worked at the hospital. What puzzled her, though, was that instead of doing his job, the boy seemed perfectly content just standing beside her bed and smiling in a friendly way at her. _Oh no. Friendly people,_ she inwardly rolled her eyes,_ please don't initiate a conversation, please don't initiate a conversation..._

"Hey, how's it going?" leaning his head in a slight bow, he introduced himself, "I'm Koshiro."

_Great. Just... great. _Akane merely blinked at him. Apathetic. "Charmed."

But it didn't seem that her cold reception put him off in the least. Quite the contrary. The boy stood dumbstruck for a few moments, with an expression on his face one has when something isn't going as anticipated. Then he smiled again with his white, perfect teeth, "You know, this is the part when you say something like, oh I don't know, your_ name_?"

"I apologize, I'm all out of pleasantries today," Akane blew softly to cool her soup, "What are you supposed to be anyway? My entertainment? Tsunade-san is a most considerate host indeed..."

"Out of...?" the brown-haired boy gave her a puzzling look. "Hah. Good one, I'll file that away for party-talk," he laughed good-naturedly with a huge grin aimed at her, "Say, do you always sound so smartass, or does it just come naturally to you when you're being a bitch?"

The spoon fell from her mouth. "...what did you just say to me?"

"Cut it out," a low voice warned, making them jump in surprise. Unnoticed, an ANBU was standing at the door, his faceless, bone-white mask fixed on them, "Just do your job, kid, and get out."

When the ANBU talked to someone, not to mention in THAT dangerous voice, it was more likely to see people piss their pants than act jokingly. Which is exactly what this 'Koshiro' guy did. He saluted to the frightening ninja with a playful 'Sir, yes, sir', almost as if _mocking_ the ANBU, and went to the small closet in the corner of the room. _Ain't he fearless. _Akane followed him with her eyes as he set the sheets on the shelves. The boy's posture was straight, expressing great confidence, and with his looks and a smile like that she could partially understand why. _Nice grey eyes, _she thought absent-mindedly, against herself.

Then something surprising happened.

On his way out, the boy Koshiro stopped for a second, as if debating something. Then, he turned, smiled and _winked_ at her, "See ya later then."

. . .

It was an action that had made Akane's brain overload with conspiracy theories.

When something like getting kidnapped, blackmailed, threatened and experimented on happened to someone in four-months' time, even dealing with normal, innocent situations came with a high dosage of incredulity and paranoia. In this case... _Posing as a part of the staff is the best way to keep cover in a hospital- Could he be working for the Sound?- Are they still after me?- Should I warn the ANBU- _But before her thoughts could get more out of hand the eighteen-year-old took a hold of herself, _No, wait. That's impossible. There's no way anybody can get into the village with the doubled securit__y. _I'm guarded by at least a dozen ANBU_, all __of which are perfectly capable of recognizing the simple transformation, AND I've heard that people who come in contact with me are triple-checked beforehand. _ Realizing how stupidly overdramatic she was acting, Akane dragged a palm over her forehead, _Am I overanalyzing everything again? Did I really just freak out over a stupid __**wink**__?_

She did. She totally did.

Taking another spoonful of chicken soup, Akane concluded heavy-hearted that there was nothing particularly diabolical about that wink. Nor with that guy. He was just plainly stupid. She just... wasn't used to ordinary-looking, non-overly-suspicious non-ninjas. She wasn't used to regular, stupid, hormone-crazy teenagers. Seriously, to wink at her? To flirt with patients? To flirt with_ her _of all the people? _Puh-lease. Only three lines and I already can't stand him. That guy had 'player' written all over him..._

Hence Akane decided to forget about the random, non-threatening and hence insignificant human being, and devoted all her attention to finding a way to survive her next imminent meeting with Morino Ibiki...

* * *

Her fever was going down, they told her, and slapped another wet towel over her face. She growled. To sum up the situation in two words: it rankled. Everything! The way the medics treated her with smiles, with care and words of wisdom, when she knew that they were just waiting to cure her and send her away to that damn white room again. Why they were even bothering to heal her first was beyond her, but she guessed that it must have been under Konoha's 'We are the good guys, we only torture people when they feel GOOD about themselves' parole.

Gah. It sickened her.

Akane preferred to be left alone, like now, for instance, so she could think about-

"Hey there, time to check your temperature!" a high-pitched feminine voice broke through her barely-five-minute peace and Akane gritted her teeth in exasperation. _For Pete's sake people! For Pete's sake! _She opened her mouth to bitch at the medic, per usual, but then slammed her lips shut in surprise. She _recognized_ this one. The blond, shapely-looking girl was already stepping to her bed, big blue (beautiful, but unsettling) eyes shimmering with excitement and chattering enthusiastically, "Oh, but before that, they've sent your kimono from the cleaning and I just had to give it to you in person. It's so gorgeous! I have to ask you: where did you buy it? It must have cost a fortune!"

Not feeling up to discussing clothes with the one she recognized as Ino Yamanaka, Akane kept quiet. She eyed the peach bundle the blond was putting on the chair beside the bed like one would something highly hazardous. The medic-girl, in her almost sickeningly cheerful mood that made a stark contrast to Akane's gloomy one, didn't, however, notice a thing, thus prompting, "I'm Ino, by the way. You have no idea for how long I've been saving to buy something like this, I have this huge interest in traditional kimonos, amongst the other things, you see, but I didn't like the choice we have here in Konoha. So maybe I can just order it or something, if it's not too expensive-"

"I'm sorry, but it was a..." Akane cut the girl's passionate ramble in a cool tone, letting a small, strange smile stretch on her lips, "...a gift."

Not losing her enthusiasm, Ino clapped her hands together. "Really? Drats for me, but still, awww, that's so swee-"

"Burn it."

"Sur—wait, what?" Baby-blue eyes popped open and bulged in incredulity. She stared at the patient in front of her, but only now she noticed that it was not a smile of fondness the girl's face held, but a disturbing, dark leer. "Sorry, what did you just say?"

"I said,"Akane pronounced each word extremely slowly, "Burn it. Keep it. Eat it. Do whatever you see fit with it."

Ino's forehead wrinkled in confusion, "I don't get it, why would you want me to- I mean, don't you_ need_ it or something?"

The long-haired girl gave a small shrug of her shoulders. "Why should I? Not like I'm leaving this place any time soon, isn't that right? Would have destroyed it in some creative way myself, but as the situation is..." she trailed off, looking wistfully out of the window.

Getting over her surprise, Ino tilted her head slightly to the side. "Oh," she said, compassionately, pressing her finger down lightly to the folded kimono, "Not good memories, huh?"

A bitter smile.

"It was given to me by _Orochimaru_."

...Instantly, Yamanaka's finger left the cloth, as if scorched. She made a face, "Agh. Now you tell me."

"Yup..." Akane nodded. Ino's presence came as surprisingly relaxing, she thought. Still, being treated by someone two years her junior she couldn't help but feel a bit silly. The eighteen-year-old faintly remembered holding a grudge against the blonde when she had watched the series, even though she couldn't remember the cause. Now, this girl (shorter than she thought she would be, but maybe it was just the bed...) with a processionally white coat over some casual purple clothes seemed rather pleasant company, for some reason. The linear trail of thought led her to Hana, who was also so simple and bubbly and e_verywhere_ and- resisting the urge to draw parallels between them, Akane immediately dispersed the memory.

From the corner of her eyes, she could see Ino raising her right hand and smiling kindly to her. "Ok, I won't hold you up any longer, just need to check your temperature. Promise I won't take even a minute." Not thinking really, Akane turned to face her and watched as the girl's small hand came towards her. "Just hold still." She could feel the warmth emitting from her skin as it hovered just an inch from her forehead...

...but then she noticed the faint, almost non-existent, blue glow of her fingers, then she caught the intent in the girl's concentrated blue eyes, then she remembered the unguarded coils of chakra in her own temples, and in the next moment her eyes were wide as saucers with realization, but she couldn't edge away, no, it was too late because-

The hand descended down on her forehead, and

her body stiffened and spasmed and kicked as

_(like swimming against the current)_

she was thrown headlong into the vortex

_(colours flashing, wheezing, blinding)_

of her own mind

_(no feelings only thoughts)_

where

_the motorbike __**the what**__ jerked with a roar like the television set that flashed a picture of Willy Wonka and the nuclear explosion lit the sky and she was free the light was warm and the wind was refreshi__ng with the smell of cookies in the cir__cus of dancing beasts while Kate sang the karaoke loudly and__** doesn't make any sense **__faster faster faster the machine spinned dispersing bubbles into the crowd which went wild screaming and clapping and __**something is wrong **__as the first sounds of electric guitar thrashed the lone military base in the middle of a cacti desert-_

The gust of memories hit her between the eyes. The images swirled into her head, the thoughts, the sensations flooded her consciousness. They blocked out the room, the sounds, Ino, everything. Everything was becoming lost in the great blinding swirl of memories and it...

_... __**can't stop can't stop**__ can't move on the hard stone floor Hana's so afraid it's so so dark__ but glowing blood-red eyeballs __crawlingsquirmingsqueezing through the sky through the ceiling the satellites circle the Earth with infared light of the cellphone broken apart and buried behind the bar in the dirt blue wasn't her color but she's blowing out the five candles on the cake __**hold back hold back now**__ to rip it with the root Makoto said if you drip drip drip with helplessness my little bird as __the picture shatters in the falling glass of skyscrapers and the terrible stench of fuel-_

The thoughts crowded in her head, flooded her mind. Memories, memories, so many memories, she felt her head growing unbearably heavy. Some threads of memories she recognized perfectly, others surprised her with how detailed they were, but she could latch onto none for long. They interrupted, shoved back, cancelled each other out, made her eyeballs burn from the inside. Instinctively, blindly, Akane's hand shot out and clenched around a wrist...

_... said WikiLeaks sprang ten thousand documents on the Internet at which Dave took his shirt off and ran onto the football field where streets are paved with time and clocks are ticking ticking nonsensically across the Amazon jungle of colourful parrots and paper air-planes flying around classroom with the Umpa-Lumpas singing __and the clouds bleeding rainbow into the peaceful lake __**sorry so sorry I had to I'll stop soon but **__A SCREAM echoes through the memories flooding like a wave of synaptic fluid because all was in the fun of clowns and the trapeze jumping so the Joker killed with the pop-pop-pop of the bone-crunching and two brains inter-twining so quickly and violently __**IT HURTS **__ spasming __and the flow of knowledge__** too many thoughts**__**-**_

A sharp pain struck like a drill through her forehead, pushing deeper, deeper, too painfully deep. Desperately she dug her fingers into the smooth skin, feeling warmth beneath her nails, maybe it was blood, holding onto it for dear life; she was dizzy and disoriented and for a moment she didn't know where...

_... where o where have those serpentine eyes go __**away away from me**__ over the stone faces of Hokages under which __the little engine went chug chug down the waterfall of chocolate and trees of candy-canes where the T-rex swallowed the truck with the US soldiers running to the burning tents of __**help help I can't stop so many**__ children cheering for __Jane won the best ice-skater in the ring of__ McDonalds french-fries and please __**release sweet release **__me Sasuke you don't scare me ever and ever and never could get an A in my physics test because I really __**need to find outlet outlet outlet **__ACDC Back in Black came from the megaphone__** need to find outlet-**_

Beads of sweat erupted on her forehead as the sensations wavered, growing beautifully weaker, but then sharpening agonizingly in the next, needles crawling over her skin now, she could see the yellow blur in front of her, it was floundering in a haze of clouds and colours, animals and machines…

_... once upon a time she had a hom__e and __so quickly they are all gone PUFF just like that __**stay **__**stay back stay back please don't touch**__ behind the glass case the bu__bbles bubbles floating in their rainbow fragility every memory a fragile bubble watch them pop__** ohnoohnoohno too much**__ and flow their synaptic fluid into the void of the piano digits twinkling in the sunlight tinkles another song from the MP3 player when she wanted to be Barbie so Kate took Ken that time the concert was CRAZY when Nazis attacked Poland in 1939 because the weather was lovely and the night cool so the tall wow so tall spotty giraffe watched an episode of the Naruto series __**NOshitSTOPstopstop sorry so sorrrry I didn't mean oh feels so good **__clocks ticking and ticking and screaming __**I WON'T LET YOU must not must not let you **__and the flashing flashing flashing of a brilliant mind__** hold out and scream help help for the **__church Santa Maria del Fiore white and huge and all its saints watching down full of pity on her-_

She was trying to push the hand away now, jerking, yanking at it with increasing consternation and anguish and she thought she would go insane, but it wouldn't budge, and they kept coming, buzzing, maddening...

…_all m__emories__ so many m__emories__ fill the bubbles hear the little poppopop of __two __minds __crashing together__ a__nd panic dripping into my skin turning turning all my soul within me inside-out burning __**release good release**__ tears can't hold in Kabuto brings the kunai to her neck in the moment Dad hummed merilly an old song with Mom but popoppop and more bubbles __burst in __the fragile skull __**cannot hold the**__ oh my little __child are you alright __**no oh no oh no what did I do so sorry **__merry-goes-round and around and around and she is sick and vomiting __**but the release give me release and NO.**_

_**more.**_

_**thoughts!**_

The crash sent shots of pain through her body as she brutally smashed her back and head into the wall to wake herself up. Her temples were throbbing; warm blood trickled behind her ears; the roots of her teeth ached as if somebody had tried to wrench them out with pliers. She sucked air through wide open mouth, from the bottom of her throat. Frenzied eyes darted around, blindly, as sweat poured into her eyebrows. She couldn't think straight,_ she couldn't think at all_, her head was a melting pot, pounding, protesting.

Silent, oh so silent seconds, minutes of air, of air and sweat and daze.

A yellow blur in front of her was gradually starting to take shape, its edges sharpening, focus fixing. There, at the other end of the hospital bed, Ino Yamanaka was trying to sit up on her knees, her hands shaking as she clutched the rail of the bed for support. Looking absolutely_ shattered_. Ino pressed her hands to her watering, horror-filled eyes, lips pale and wide-open in a mute scream. Her hair was sticking from her pony-tail around her flushed, panic-stricken face. She couldn't raise her head to look at Akane, while Akane couldn't move her neck and all she could do was stare straight at her, trying to speak. "W-w-what..." her thin voice came out in terrified death-rattles.

"W-What did... y-you... s-see?" the soothsayer panted out harshly at last, feeling like she would be ill, like she would faint then and there from fear, feeling like-

But the blond girl didn't respond.

Tumbling once again to her knees, Ino was now struggling to get to her feet. Her usually pretty features were twisted into a grotesque with disbelief. She gazed mutely at her own right hand, as if she had gone insane; with the other she was drilling her fingers into her hair, squeezing the skull beneath. She said nothing at all.

Akane's whole body had erupted into twitches by now, as if she had epilepsy. She wanted to crawl to the other girl, take her by the collar, choke her, make her speak to her, but didn't. She couldn't, her limbs had gone dead, numb.

"WHAT," she croaked again, throat dry with shock, "did you see?" She was almost screeching now. "Tell me NOW, tell me WHAT DID YOU SEE? !"

Blue irises jumped at the almost inhuman sound. Then finally, slowly, Ino turned to her. Stumbling backwards, she took two steps off of the bed and halted. Staring at Akane, emotionless. She shook her head, trying to get her thoughts clear but obviously failing miserably. A vein was pulsing on the side of her face, red and inflamed. Despite that her face contorted in great pain, the girl pushed herself to smile a small, shaky half-smile at Akane, "Y-You..."

"Y-Y-You... don't have a f-fever!" the medic finished the sentence in what she obviously hoped to be an enthusiastic voice. The high-pitched squeal she tried to imitate sounded like nails on a chalk-board. "No, nope, you d-d-don't have a fever at all." She was stumbling over her words, breaths coming in stutters, "I-I-I've gotta report that to... Tsunade-sama. No fever at all. Yes, that's a g-g-great thing. Just great. Have a g-good... ah... a great day, Akane-san!"

Quicker than Akane could react, Ino rushed out of the room, pressing a hand to her mouth to keep from vomiting. The door hung open on its hinges, creaking.

She was gone.

Alone, the girl still known as the soothsayer could hear her heart drum in her ears. _No... _Unfeeling, she pressed her back against the wall.

Half-catatonic.

Silent.

Numb from head to toe.

She wanted to die.

_(Are you disturbed yet?)_

Never in her life before did Akane think that she would be so deathly afraid... of Yamanaka Ino.

* * *

**Translation: A****equam servare mentem- to preserve a calm mind: recognizes the value of maintaining a clear head while participating in the activities of life; especially, when making special decisions and when in danger.**

**A/N: I sincerely apologize for not being able to reply to anonymous reviews, I'm too short on time! x( I'll reply as soon as I can on my profile page, though, so be sure to read it!**

**Fave lines/scenes/whatever? I'm eager to hear your opinion! And as you know, I have no problems with letting myself in for the critic, so feel free to offer some constructive criticism as well. ;) Btw, the randomness part KILLED me in the head. :P In this case, that's a good thing. If it did the same to you, let me know.**


	28. Esse est percipi

**Chapter twenty-eight:**

**Esse est percipi**

**A/N: Done with the finals, preparing for other tests for college. Busy, busy. Horribly. Sorry for the delay, but... you understand, right? Just so you know, from now on I will be replying to anonymous reviews on my profile page- saves space and is much easier to edit and add stuff. Whoever hasn't seen the TPoL fanart, I suggest you go to my profile, where I've provided the links- the pictures are just plain awesome. ^^ Enjoy. **

* * *

_Patient's name: __Akane __ (none) _

_Sex:__ female _

_Nurse: __Yamada Tsuki_

_Consultant: __dr Adagawa Isamu_

_Special Instructions: __no visitors allowed _

_Type of accommodation: __residential_

_Admission records: (__none) _

_Personal and social history: __orphaned at young age; speech-problems at you__ng age; villager of Futari;__ a prisoner of the Sound _

_Main diagnosis: __Acute Stress Disorder; _精神分裂症の_personality disorder *_

_Medication and Treatment: __mo no a mi n_ 酸化酵素阻害剤;_ food with_ 炭水化物;_ combination of _選択的_; se ro to ni n_再取_ri_込_me_阻害 阻害剤 (be n zo di a ze pi n); 認知行動療法 **_ 

_Physician's orders: __crème for skin problems (apply twice a day) _

_Nurse's notes: __refuses prescribed medicine and treatment; exhibits hostile behaviour _

_Misc. Records: __possible evolution into _心的外傷後 _stres s_障害_or _心的外傷後憤慨 障害 *** 

_Primary complaints: __fear and anxiety; problems with controlling motoric functions; frequent emotional outbursts; emotional numbness _

_Other symptoms: _過敏症; 不眠症; _hallucinations-_

* * *

_-_hallucinations.

That was the final conclusion they came to.

She was now officially considered batshit insane.

"...thank goodness," Akane sighed in relief, clipping the notepad back onto the rail and then slouching back into her pillows. The report went further, explaining her emotional state in a bunch of scribbles she couldn't even hope to translate: probably medical terms for the most part, so she gave it up. She gouged her eyes out trying to read even that small fragment of the report, not having read Japanese for the last four months...

When the group of doctors and nurses came to take her to yet another room that morning, the eighteen-year-old couldn't help but jump rigid in panic: after the whole episode with Ino that had shredded her confidence into nothingness, she was convinced that they were going to take her to that frightening white room and Morino Ibiki again. The girl had growled in alarm, refused to get out of bed until they literally forced her out of it, struggling as much as the next crazy-person when they dragged her out of the room and into the corridors.

It would seem that her overreaction back then proved to be a good thing in the long-run, seeing the situation progressed in the way it did. Her newer-than-her-new-room was buried deeply down six hallways, at the very back of the famed sector D. It was practically a new building, attached to the hospital during Second Shinobi War, she heard the nurses mention. Even though this room was equally bare, white and claustrophobic as the interrogation-room had been, Akane had to admit that she was quite satisfied with it: at least the blasted kimono had been taken away, never to be seen again. She could finally be alone and merely wait for her plan to take action_._

It had been her last desperate idea: to give Tsunade a hint at the Akatsuki and then wait until Hidan and Kakuzu showed their faces in the Land of Fire. Hopefully, Tsunade would remember her words and make the connection: it would be an irrefutable evidence of her clairvoyance and her role as a soothsayer would be back in the game and... and after that?

_After that I'll consider my various possibilities,_ she thought, appeased_, in arrang_ing_ that I'm taken to the battle with the zombie-duo. And__** then**_.._. _Her lips quirked at the thought._ Let's just say that if Konoha won't help me, I'll have to find someone who will. _

Akatsuki.

They were her last hope. Was it moral? To help the notorious organization she _knew _was planning mass murders, to side with criminals so rotten, so terrifying and inhumane? The correct answer in any social situation would have been: no. But there were no rights and wrongs for Akane anymore. She would do what she thought she had to do. She did not care for the consequences.

_(What is the line when determination turns into cruelty?)_

_Hush. _The young woman shook her head to silence the whisper of conscience. Until the right time came, she wanted to be left alone to collect her thoughts. The isolated room was perfect. She truly couldn't be bothered with Konoha's paranoid government anymore- she didn't have the strength. Time was what she needed, rest, solitude, to be far away from ninja who treated her with nothing but suspicion and accusations. How awfully sick she was of it all! The conclusion was perfectly clear in her eyes- to deal with the pain, she had only one choice left:

She had to become completely heartless.

* * *

_It is freezing and she is running down a dimly-lit hallway, but it goes on and on and on and on and on-_

* * *

The second day brought her new information.

The ANBU were not guarding her anymore, she overheard her nurse (a cowardly looking thing that twitched at her mere glances) say to another one. This could mean only one thing: that Akane was not important anymore. For the time being, that was fine. Excellent, actually. Nobody tested her for prophecies, nobody pressured her to take her medicine or treatment, nobody cared about her at all. It was as if they left her in that room only to pretend they were helping her, whilst in reality their true intention was to simply forget about her. For Akane, that was when life changed drastically.

No more interrogations.

No more check-ups.

Just four blank walls caging her in and deafening silence.

It was that disgusting kind of silence which bred memories, likely an aftermath of what Akane liked to call 'the Ino-incident'. Upon much pondering, the girl concluded that the strange, deranged connection was most probably made accidentally, when Ino had pushed her chakra much-too-close to her head-chakra (because Konoha didn't test her for genjutsu before, they obviously thought Ino's technique would work perfectly). While their chakras merely touched each other, the consequences were dire. Due to this, Ino must have seen only the twisted fragments of her memories, the real-life part of them very opaquely for that matter, as they were buried more deeply into her brain than the recent Sound-ones. That's why it must have seemed to the medic that they were only illusions. Konoha's officials couldn't make sense of it, so the only plausible conclusion they reached was that the Sound-girl went delusional in her prison. It was the perfect explanation. Completely satisfying.

However, the partially-successful-mind-reading had more severe consequences for Akane: it left her already-fragile psyche crowded with shadows of suppressed memories. They now crept behind her eyes, wrenched violently to the surface from the depths of their slumber. The eighteen-year-old was haunted by the memories of intimate words, of well-familiar faces; faces of her parents whose every slightest wrinkle she still remembered, of her bosom friends whose eyes she knew to the very last spot. She was haunted by the memories of simple conversations, always the same, she had had with acquaintances at school, the routine of everyday-life, the circle of things familiar and constant that had closed around her like a shelter, like a fortress, and kept her safe.

Then Akane would bolt up, like a child waking up from a dream and realizing in panic that it is late for school, because she indeed was a child, dreaming and fantasizing with open eyes, and was running late behind what was now the 'real world'. It was necessary to smash away the unnerving nostalgia and dive into the ever-more unnerving reality, even if she drowned in it. The eighteen-year-old didn't know why she persistently clung to the memories of her childhood in the first place—it must have been an escape from what _is_, a type of salvation, an uncontrollable wish to destroy that... that _alien_ reality, to overthrow it and make it disappear by her will alone. But there were so many things to _prepare:_ insidious words she would present to Tsunade when the time came, the right expression she would bring into the room, the confident way in which she would introduce herself to the Akatsuki later on...

If not reminiscing about her home, Akane found herself thinking about Futari, Makoto, Ken, Hana- and then she would think about the Sound. Mostly, they were depressing realizations of just how bleak her existence had become in that goddamned place. Akane was fully aware of it now. She grew increasingly aware of most things about the Sound that she hadn't even thought about before. Now, as she lay in the bed in a separate room with nothing to do and nobody to argue with till the mousy-nurse decided to cower before her again, Akane found herself reliving her memories, not in a form of flashbacks, but messy threads of thought. She thought about Uchiha Sasuke, and then about Yakushi Kabuto- but mostly, she thought about the Snake Sannin.

Never in her life had a person imprinted himself so deeply into her subconscious, or made her feel and act like she did now. She remembered how his mere presence had set off floods of panic inside of her. Only now did she have enough courage to admit to herself how truly _terrified_ she had been of him.

_I was always scared... _she recalled with a shudder slithering down her spine, _He scared me... __**so much.**_

And now, rid of that fear, she sort of felt... empty. It was insane to think of it that way, she knew, but it was the truth. Rid of hate, rid of her fears, Akane started to think logically about the whole situation and came to the conclusion that it could have been _a lot _worse. In a way, the Sound ninjas had even cut her some slack: they could have maimed her or made her go truly insane in millions of equally demented ways... but they didn't. They had let her simmer, slowly, in the synaptic fluids of her own neurons, as she contemplated and remembered and schemed _hopelessly_ in the dark of her room with a single candle. They were probably even being nice about it. The predictions she told them were informative, yes, but certainly not necessary, not even particularly useful. They should have gotten rid of her a long time ago... why didn't they?

In the end, however hard it may have been to admit to herself, she knew that she had been truly_ lucky_. The man she was up against had been much, much more cunning than she had previously assumed him to be. Only then did she truly realize how_ she _had bound _herself _with that deal Orochimaru and she had made (that _he_ had manipulated her into making, she corrected herself), and how even the smallest freedom for which she had fought so desperately had been nothing but the simplest illusion. In reality, she had unwittingly played by his rules all that time...

"Hey you. Nice to see you again," Akane did a double take when the familiar voice interrupted her thoughts. _What—Where-When did he __get here?_ Looking up in a frenzy, she met a pair of handsome gray eyes she had come to dislike but a day ago. She sucked in a breath.

"Oh no, not _you_ again..."

"Wow. _What_ a welcome."

"What, were you expecting me to shower you with rose petals?"

The boy Koshiro shook his head slightly, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Ouch, giving me the cold shoulder again, I see. I know you girls like to play hard to get, but come oooon, aren't you being a little harsh?"

...No retaliation came from her after this. She could only stare dumbly at him. He was mocking her. He had to be mocking her. If not, then..._ What. the hell. is wrong with this guy?_

Her bewildered silence prompted him to speak again (as if he needed encouragement anyway) while at the same time he set the clean sheets at the end of the bed, "Oh, I've got some news for you- get up, I need to change these, thanks- you see, Tsuki-chan has been very distressed lately and the fact that you freak her out ain't helping much."

Akane stood to the side of the bed to allow him access, feeling strangely self-conscious in her short hospital gown that revealed her unshaved legs, and watched closely as the boy piled the used sheets on the floor. All the while, he kept chatting away gleefully, like a child talking about a particularly amusing event, "So. Being the self-sacrificing guy I am, I offered to, unofficially, switch with her. She took my job, at the 'Heavily Mental' wing: muttered something 'bout feeling more comfortable with paranoiacs and schizos... "

Highly indignant, the girl opened her mouth to utter something, but Koshiro continued on, "Which means..." He leaned over the bed, stretching the clean sheet over it in a practised way, then pulled back to smile deviously at her, "...that we'll be seeing each other an awful lot. But don't worry, I'll take good care of you, Akane-chan- yeah, she told me your name. Wonderful, huh?"

. . .

_...You've gotta be kidding me._

Upon his extravagant 'Ta-da' gesticulation to the bed (she wasn't sure if he meant it as a mockery or a simple joke), Akane climbed up on it again. "Wait... Wait a minute..." she pressed her back into the pillows, "What're you...? I mean... You deliver sheets and towels! What do you mean you'll be assigned to me?"

"What, you mean this?" the ever-smiling Koshiro pinched the plastic 'staff' plate on his chest, "Oh, no, I only volunteer for this job." He winked in a 'this is our little secret' way at her, "Have to work hard if I want to be a doctor one day. Apart from the practical part of my classes, this staff-duty gets me extra 'good-boy' points for my school."

_Med-school? _She puzzled over it. It made sense, there had to be regular medics in this world as well, but it managed to surprise her. Koshiro was just a student, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two? Whatever, the overly-familiar approach he took irritated her to no end. The guy knew nothing about her, how dare he talk to her like that! He acted more like they were friggin' schoolmates than a mental patient and a... a...

"So... you're going to be... my... _nurse_?" she asked with a hint of humour in her voice, "My, how darling."

For a moment she thought the student would be affronted, before she realized that he was still warmly smiling, his eyebrows merely curved upwards to fit with the expression. "Kinda... yeah. Ok, it sounds _really_ lame when you say it like that, but you got the gist. So..." His youthful spotty face expressed great interest, which Akane found rather ridiculous in her usual foul mood. "You're gonna take your medicine now?"

She wrinkled her forehead. "No."

"...can't say I didn't try," the brown-haired boy shrugged his shoulders. "Well, gotta run: have places to be, girls to grace with my presence," he turned on his heel, but lingered in his place, as if waiting for a reaction. When he received none, he went on for the door. "See you tomorrow then."

With him gone, the soothsayer puffed a small laugh. _Thank goodness for small miracles. Alone at last._ She went over the bare room with her eyes. Then glanced out of the window. Then her eyes fell on the door to the toilet. Then she focused on her folded hands. Fully intent to go back to thinking about-whatever she had been thinking about before this clown entered the room. But she couldn't.

It was too... quiet.

And that's when it started to get terribly boring...

* * *

_No, no, no, NO, I'm not going to do it, you can't make me, they're going to die and it's going to be my fault, I can't do it, I can't, I can't, I-_

_Must._

_The edge of the knife for chopping vegetables shines, red and wet, and it's my fault, everything is my fault, but I must, I must, I must-_

_kill myself._

* * *

_(You've been here for twelve days now. Don't forget that. Twelve.)_

The days seemed to bleed into each other.

The girl kept track of time only by nightmares now, which were always extraordinarily vivid and extremely life-like. The scenes sometimes didn't make any sense, but she wouldn't realize that until she was finally awake: the setting was so plausible and familiar, the details so subtle, so harmonious with the whole picture, that it horrified her. Such morbid dreams sundered her already disturbed nerves and sometimes they would haunt her through the whole day or, more likely, longer.

Holding onto the faint optimism she had left, Akane also kept track of time by sunrises, which she loved to watch. Not that she could actually _see_ them: out of her little window she could scarcely see anything through the curtain of pine-needles of the damned conifer right outside it. When the wind moved its ever-green branches, she could make out the gloomy, low sky, heavy from rainfall, weighing down on roofs and chimneys. It was Konoha's winter, more like an autumn, equally depressing. Rare as they were, sometimes the golden patches of sunlight would make a breach into her room and spill over the bed. Those were the only moments in which she felt eased in her mind. Those were the moments she lived for. Forced to wait, for seconds, minutes, hours and days, Akane was slowly starting to forget _what in th__e world_ it was that she waiting for.

Most of the time, however, she couldn't fall asleep, but lay on her white bed in her white room in a stupor, feeling only half-alive. If anybody had entered the room at those times she would have sprung up at once with a cry. Disjointed scraps and fragments of memories floated through her mind, but she could not seize one of them, or dwell upon any, in spite of all her efforts. The sleep would fulminate at unequal, unpredictable intervals, and she woke up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked with hatred at her room. The indistinct hum of the city now sounded like the distant, dark bass of an organ to her. The children's excited chatter beneath her window angered her, and she prayed that they would just shut up. They reminded her of school, of her childhood, of those halcyon days with her sister and friends, of everything she held dear but had taken for granted. She masochistically kept that memory, like an amulet heated to incandescence, but it, also, faded with time, lost its color and freshness, and alacrity, and meaning. And Akane waited and waited and _waited_...

It was so hard to remember her home now that she began to doubt if it had ever even existed. She couldn't argue this with anybody (it was a discussion she craved, as she needed someone to rationalize it with, being too tired of talking to herself). No, she couldn't even bring it up. What colour had the wallpaper in her room been? What did her mom's voice sound like? And how... how in the world did that quote of Dad's go? '_An apple a day...'_ He used to repeat it so many times that she called him annoying, but she had known it by heart! Why couldn't she remember the stupid line? The memories flew at the tips of her fingers and then, like ebbing tide, floated far out of her reach. She_ hated _it. Sometimes, when she was deeply concentrated, a thread of a memory would coil softly around her finger... but then she would jerk her hand away in panic. It proved too painful, remembering. She changed her mind. She despised it more than not being able to remember at all.

_Go away, shadow, _she demanded, _nothing could have been different, and that's why it pains me so greatly. Rip your threads from me and leave. I can't take it anymore, you breathing down my neck, creeping behind my heels, because you attract memories. You're making me want to give you color and form. But you must not become real. Go away and leave me be._

_I cannot bear to remember._

* * *

_(sixteen days... twenty four multiply sixteen equals...)_

"Listen, I don't want any bad blood between us, so let's just bury our hatchets, ok?"

"As if I could care less..."

"Geez, if you're like this in the afternoon, I don't even wanna _imagi__ne_ what you're like in the morning..."

"How I act is completely my lookout."

"You know what you are? A splinter of a heart in a cube of ice."

"So now you're a poet as well? You're a guy of many talents, Koshiro-san."

His shoulders shook with silent laughter. "That, I am. If we're sharing compliments today, I must say that you really are something else yourself, Akane-chan."

"Would you stop with the -chan, already?"

"Meh, you'll get used to it. Are you going to take your medication now?"

"What do you think?"

"Too bad then. Oh, I have to go, have a house-party tonight and the girls are waiting in queues for yours truly."

"Get 'em, tiger."

He left.

She rolled her eyes. "Poor idiot."

Koshiro proved to be overbearing, too free with his flirtations, and sometimes sarcastic to the point of being downright rude, if you asked Akane.

...still, he helped pass the time.

* * *

_It is a vast, blue sea, and she is in a wooden boat, but the boat is stranded on a single hill of sand in the middle of it. The boat has a hole and is slowly filling up with sand, and she is singing some old song—maybe it's in English- she can't remember, as the grains of time rise and drown the song in her lungs-_

* * *

"Well, dear me, you've gone dandy!"

"Knew it! The moment you change, everything changes."

_(could it be...intelligence?)_

"...what... did you just say?"

"The shirt. You like the shirt? Hah, I knew you'd like it!"

_(...back to square one.)_

"No. It's hideous."

"Whaaat?"

"You heard me. Better put your uniform back on, nurse-boy."

"Maybe you should put it on me, ey?"

...such an _impudent _suggestion.

"Suffice it to say that there are millions of ways I could humiliate you right now, but I'm feeling rather generous today, hence I'll only grace you with a roll of my eyes."

"There you go, acting up all bitchy again. If you must know, Yuuki-chan asked me out the moment- and I stress_ the moment_- she laid her eyes on me in this good-lookin' purple shirt."

"Well whoop-dee-friggin-do for you..."

"Jealous, aren't we?"

"Ah me! What ever shall I do if you go out with whatsherface. My splinter of a heart might break in two!"

"Ok, ok, no need to beg me further, I won't go. Just for you."

"...for heaven's sake, would you just _shut up_?"

* * *

_**Akane-chaaaaan- Akane-chaaaaaaan- **__She thinks she hears a voice call her for a second, but then it stops and once more the hospital is completely quiet. __**You're mad.**__ Akane tells herself and shakes her head, __**You went mad, old girl.**__ She looks out of the window and catches a glimpse of the Fourth Hokage's spiky stone hair. Konoha and its problems seem so far away. She doesn't know if she is dreaming or awake._

* * *

The other nurses, even the doctors, seemed eager to leave her room as quickly as they could, however rare their visits were. It was easy to guess that she horrified them-no, not because she was truly frightening, but it were her whimsical changes of apathy and aggression, uncharacteristic even to her mental illness, that disturbed them so greatly. The worst thing yet was that Akane, 'the insane, paranoid, phobic stress-disorder-lee', could act so... normal. These people were unnerved by the cold-blooded confidence she obviously had in something that was beyond anybody's understanding.

...when did she start to think of them as _people,_ anyway? When did she start considering them real human beings?

_Not real not real not real never real. No blood, no flesh, no feelings. They are not real, they must not be real_.

So Akane sat, lay or paced, alone and lonely, staring mutely at the walls.

_(has it already been twenty days?)_

A fly on the window rubbed its tiny feet greedily.

The rain outside painted the sky in dull, watery gray.

And her bleach-white room kept glowering at her, and she kept scowling right back.

It was driving her insane.

The cuticles on both thumbs were now torn to shreds, and blood trickled down her skin, far enough to touch at her wrists. Akane hesitated, and then shook her head, bringing a thumb into her mouth and sucking on it, quickly. The illness was absorbing her, she felt, and she didn't know how to fight it anymore. She had tried to fight herself and lost so many times...what had made her think she could win this time?

_Oh God, _she cried in herself, or maybe she did it out loud, she wasn't sure anymore,_ I can't endure it any more... and it's only the twenty-first day. I don't know when the Akatsuki enters the picture again, I'm not even sure if Tsunade will remember me then, this was all such a huge and senseless gamble! I will never find Hana. I will never get out of this blasted village and find Hana. Still, I have to... I have to save her... but... why? _

Later, in spite of the monologues in which she jeered at her own impotence and indecision, she had involuntarily come to regard her position as incredibly ridiculous. 'Ha-ha' ridiculous.

She was insane.

She wasn't insane.

But if she was, how would she know?

If she wasn't, what should she do?

Hello subtle chaos.

Fancy meeting you here.

Damn.

Simple thoughts seemed like _such_ a luxury right now...

* * *

"You aren't much of a talker, are you?"

"Would you just go_ away_?" she grit out between two bites of her lunch, on the verge of yelling out in irritation. Why was this... _character _still talking to her? What were his objectives? "And stop it."

"Stop what?"

"That."

"Huh?"

"Talking to me. Just... don't."

"You know what? You' re weird," Koshiro, the brazen one, simply concluded, leaning against the opposite wall of her bed. Day after day he'd come into the room, get her into a meaningless conversation-slash-argument, suggest she takes her medicine, she'd refuse, he'd shrug his shoulders and leave. It was sort of becoming a routine of theirs. Considering the delicate state of mind she was in, Akane found it strangely comforting to have something as predictable as a routine in her life.

So once more she found herself staring straight at him, unbelieving, "Says a guy who's intent on stalking and socializing with a girl, previously held by the ANBU, from the farthest corner of Konoha's Mental Department! Correct me if I'm wrong, but only nutcases are that eager to hang around other nutcases."

"And what if I don't think you're a nutcase?"

"Then you might as well learn to _read_, nurse-boy," she gave up, tapping the note-pad at the end of the bed with her toe.

This time, it went different.

To her astonishment, Koshiro didn't shrug his shoulders, nor did he declare how he's a busy guy, has girls having cat-fights for him, or throw a dismissive, yet flirty comment her way. He broke their routine by throwing his hands in the air, "Fine. You win. Let's do it the boring way."

In two steps he was by her bed with the notepad in his hands. Baffled, Akane observed for any changes in his unusually serious face, both of them silent. A few breathless moments floated by. "Hyper-vigilance, insomnia, hallucinations?" the medicine-student muttered as he clipped it back to the rail, "Whoa. Alright, you may be bit of a bigger quack than I thought you were. Still, it's hard for me to truly believe any of this."

Suddenly skeptical, Akane narrowed her eyes at him, "And why is that?"

There it was- that characteristic small shrug of his nice, broad shoulders. "...I dunno," he admitted, "Cause you seem like a fighter. Cause you are too boringly rational and stuck-up and realistic and you wouldn't _ever _buy into hallucinations before poking them with a stick or something- something probably sharp." His silvery-gray eyes bore into her jaded green ones and he smiled, confidently, "Madness would cower before your will."

. . .

The long-haired girl lowered head. Her grip on the bowl placed on her knees loosened. Because something weird happened. Something extraordinary and frightening and bizarre and sudden. What happened was that-

Akane felt something. Right there.

She. _Felt_. It.

And to make it even stranger, it was... _pleasant._

Warmth spread through her body and for the briefest moment Akane felt secure, refreshed, **strong**. _Madness would cower before your will. _Did... did he really mean it? Did he really believe she was still strong-willed, that she had enough courage to face herself? It was... the most beautiful, the most encouraging thing anybody had said to her since Naruto. What made Koshiro say that? What made him think about her in that way, why was he..._ trying_ so much around her? What _was_ he trying to do anyway?

_Go away,_ her body language weakly said, hands curled into the sheet, eyelashes cast downwards, as the troubled girl kept quiet and speechless. What was amazing, however, was that the stupid, shallow Koshiro, as she had come to view him as, understood it right away. He threw one last look at her before he went through the door. "I... I have to go. See you tomorrow."

If Akane had had the courage to look up, she would have seen how those gray eyes, eyes that usually shone with sneering mirth, had looked at her differently- with the warmest concern she would ever see.

* * *

_(day number... does it matter?)_

Sometimes she woke, not knowing who she was.

No name, no age, no hometown. No nothing.

Then she remembered and had to bite her knuckles to silence the scream in herself. She lay in the bed, in a morose and unsociable manner, feet entangled in sheets, sheets entangled in silver moonlight, and waited.

Waited?

For what?

She had been patient for so long that oblivion had spread like a tumour in her brain.

Something had happened within her, something alien to her, new, sudden, completely strange. She didn't get it, but she felt with all her being that she would never regard people with politeness again, like she had done all those years back; no, she felt that she couldn't even speak with them, or understand them, nor could they understand her. This world, about which she had thought she knew everything, had become a mystery to her, just like she was to it in return; they stood opposite one of the another, looked at each other in confusion, without a glimpse of understanding, without an inkling of recognition. Because no matter how much she knew about this world and its people, even after more than two years of living amongst them, they were simply strangers to her. Now, her mind was veiled in some empty, melancholic feeling of isolation. She thought that if anybody were to speak to her, she would have spat and snarled at him like an animal... with the exception of Koshiro, maybe, for some reason.

He was crazy.

He was superficial.

He was puzzling.

Koshiro could talk about the most trivial of things, but then, suddenly, an original thought or unexpected wisdom would scrape through his speech, unnoticed by him. The guy just liked to talk and he didn't seem to care what other people thought of him. The more he evaded the anime-character-sheet she tried to squish him into, the more she got interested in him. Obviously, Koshiro didn't mind at all, providing her the answers, with odd wit and playfulness he seemed to overpour, to the questions she kept (less discreetly by the day) asking him.

"-then why do you want to become a doctor?" she asked him once _(twenty-sixth day) _in a 'by-the-way' manner as they talked (read: she snapped at him and he smiled at her) even though she was, in reality, itching to find out.

Koshiro went quiet for a moment at this question, folded another sheet, and replied, simply, "Money. Pays well."

For some reason, the answer disappointed her (_because you want to believe he's different_) and she, grim, folded her arms over her chest, "Pays for the parties and booze and the easy life-style, I suppose."

"More like, pays the bills and the food my little brother eats."

...The sentence caught her off-guard.

Wide-open green eyes looked at him with recognition for the very first time, like they were digging him out of some colorless, meaningless mass, like they were giving him form and features. Immediately she regretted her bitter choice of words and wanted to- strangely enough for Akane-_apologize_ to him. What surprised her even more so was that he didn't look like he wanted or was expecting her to, but rather like he fully understood and forgave her, just like that, without acting insulted or raising a fuss. Everything was so... easy with him. He was easy-going and easy to forgive, he felt no need to pretend or lie, which often resulted in him appearing arrogant and rude and pretty much simple. He made up for those 'flaws' (as the society does indeed consider such things flaws) with his unspoiled and good-natured personality, helped with his boyish smile. She had thought him a hedonist, a simple-minded, immature male, but...

"You have a little brother?"

_(had a little sister...)_

"Seven years old. Can be a handful. Good thing I have Gramps to baby-sit him."

"What about you parents?"

"Died. On a mission."

For the first time she had known him, an unapproachable look got into his eyes and Akane, feeling like she had gone too far, decided to drop any further questions. _So they were ninjas. _The hard expression looked weird on him, but it was there for only a second, before it morphed into a neutral face. Seeing him like that, something in her softened. The words left her throat on their own, as if wanting to provide him a small comfort, "I'm sorry, Koshiro-san. The world of ninja truly is a treacherous, frightening place..."

She didn't expect him to drop the sheets from his hands. Silvery-gray eyes were on hers instantly, an excited, almost hopeful glint to them. "You don't trust ninjas either?" he asked her, breathlessly.

"I... I don't trust _people_," she settled for replying, surprised with his interpretation of her words. What... in the world... was that? What kind of reaction was that?

"Ah." Her reply seemed to have put him down, for whatever reason. That day Koshiro left a bit earlier than he usually did. As for Akane... she spent the rest of the night thinking about him.

Being used to immediately knowing all about a person, the soothsayer was struck dumb at the realization that she couldn't figure out an average teenager. She had thought she sussed him out in their first thirty-second conversation, and yet...

Now, Akane was a complete beginner in the art of 'getting to know someone the old fashioned way'. What she once considered the most natural thing in the world seemed as mind-boggling as astrophysics. This guy had an exquisite talent for ruffling her feathers, even when he didn't really _do _anything, that was a fact. However...

_There is more to him, _she realized, confused over her own thoughts_, there is more to him... and I want to know what it is. I want to know him better..._

_(For once, you may be doing the right thing.)_

The half-crazy girl chuckled to herself, pitifully and happily at the same time, and completely rationally whispered, "Something must be _wrong_ with me..."

* * *

_A man, quiet as a shadow, slips into her room. Akane keeps staring at the ceiling, because this is a dream, nothing is real anymore, and she wants to be alone. His arm is bandaged, she sees from the corner of her eyes, completely uninterested in his presence, as well as half of his head as well, she notes. __**Are you awake, girl? **__he asks, he is an old man, she hears, but doesn't turn to him, because he is not real. Staring at the ceiling. Everything is so white. A white haze. __**Answer me, **__again he addresses her, but she yawns and starts talking to walls, just so he would go away. He does so, even though she doesn't see when he leaves exactly._

_It was Danzo, she realizes. Or at least...It may have been him... and I wouldn't even know it. It doesn't register in my brain anymore. It's rotting. My mind is rotting in this place, and then I'll be left helpless. Maybe... Maybe I should..._

_No..._

_Not the treatment... but maybe..._

* * *

With algid fingers, numb from the chilly wind, she tapped against the blank sheet of paper. She had requested it from one of those nurses that come and go, not really expecting anything, but the old woman remembered and brought it to her. She would be back to take the pencil when she returned to close the window in less than five minutes, the nurse warned, so _behave nicely, alright sweetie? Or else..._ to which Akane had nodded and clutched the paper protectively to her chest.

She had to try this.

The soothsayer stared at the invaluable piece of paper in front of her, listening to the wind howl and the branches beat upon the windowsill. The fly buzzed tediously in the corner of the room. Outside the window, the rain dirtied the sky with grays and blacks. And the eighteen-year-old girl sat in between four blank walls, hesitant, tracing her fingers across the clean white surface. Could she remember how it was done? Could she remember _them_? It would be hard. And if she couldn't- oh God it was frightening, too, too frightening a thought...

Finally, she decided her mind. Took a deep breath. And started writing.

**Stace-**

Her hand was stiff and robotic as she pulled the pen over the paper, extremely slowly, curving her knuckles. The letters were big and shaky, like a first-grader wrote them. _Concentrate._ It was taking her more effort than she thought she could put into it, but she_ had_ to write it down, she just had to. She made the final little spiral at the end of the letter and quickly tapped a dot, as if the words would fall apart on the paper if she didn't do so.

**Stacey Winfield. **it wrote.

Her chest heaved with relief.

She did it.

She wrote the first name.

_Mom..._

A sharp, almost physical pain pierced her through her chest. Next. Quickly. _You can do it._ Her teeth tattered. _Quickly. _The tip of the pencil pressed harshly on the paper, almost drilling through. She pulled a vertical line. Added two curves. The letter B.

**Brad. **She wrote her father's name. Then another one, short and loving. **Kate.**

It all came pouring out of her.

**Dave. Jane. Haley. Chris. Danny. Nick. Susan.**

Those were her friends. She used to have friends.

**Sarah. Marry. Josh. Anna. Andrew. Leyla. Eve. Kevin. Matt. Luke. Bet. Peter. Rachel. Terry. Sonia. Neil. Emma-**

Her schoolmates.

**Lilly. Mrs. Baker. The Tuckers. Tony. Miss Heim. Mr. Hughes. Mrs. Shaw and Alexandra. Rory. Mrs Roberts-**

Neighbours.

The pen was flying around the paper now, writing out the names, short and long, of all the people she could remember, even if she forgot their habits, personalities, or even their faces, but she kept on writing, line after line, name after name, in simple, beautiful **English** letters, and her hand was shaking, _her whole body_ was shaking, but she couldn't forget, _she couldn't __**let herself**__ forget! _Maybe she didn't spell some right, or maybe she got them all wrong, or maybe she truly was crazy and just made them up, but she held them _in her hands. _Akane stared, unblinkingly, at rows of letters, at the stream of names, at the _evidence_ of her past...

...but instead of feeling better, her heart sank. For they were just names, not people, not her life. The young girl looked at the paper for what seemed like hours to her, not the five precious minutes she was granted, and searched for her own name. But it wasn't there, so she took the pencil and added it, another useless, non-existing name, in rushed, careless letters: **Elisa Winfield.**

So it was done. Just like that. It was a list of all the people that were gone, none of whom she could bring back. At least not now. Akane kept watching and wandering: did she, by doing this, bring them alive or bury them all over again? More probable was, in any case, the latter. It was cold outside and it had been raining for hours, leaving the air with an earthen smell like a freshly dug grave. That in itself divulged the memory of a funeral and, in that moment, it somehow seemed fitting. Akane leaned her head back, closed her tired eyes, and listened to the rain on the roof.

It sounded like the heartbeat of a dying world.

* * *

"Come on, Akane-chan, take your medicine today. Come on, just take it... please?"

"...alright."

* * *

**Translations: "Esse est percipi"- To be is to be perceived. (this thesis suggests that all the things surrounding us are nothing but our ideas. Sensible things have no other existence distinct from their being perceived by us. This also applies to human bodies. When we see our bodies or move our limbs, we perceive only certain sensations in our consciousness. In other words, it means that if nobody can see you, you can't be certain that you truly exist, thus your existence is false and insignificant)**

**I've debated putting these translations (after all, you're supposed to know **_**only**_** what Akane knows), but seeing that they would not be classified as 'spoliers', here you go:**

*** Acute Stress Disorder, Schizoid Personality Disorder**

**** Monoamin oxidase inhibitors, food with carbon hydrates, combination of ****Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors; cognitive-behavioural therapy**

*****possible evolution into Post-traumatic stress disorder or Post-traumatic embitterment disorder**

* * *

**A/N: Alright, so I know that there are no Naruto characters and this may be boring you and yada yada yada. But looking realistically, tit is more likely that Akane would interact with regular people rather than those certain persons the show features. Oh, and **_**of course**_** the loony-house ain't interesting. Sorry kids. Reality sucks.**

**Anyway, what I'm interested in the most is: what is your opinion on the new character Koshiro? I absolutely died of laughter at Nevervana's comment about him: (I'm paraphrasing)'The best way to deal with a sarcastic bastard who takes everything too seriously is to make him deal with a sarcastic bastard who takes nothing too seriously! :D' True, all too true. She's such a genius.**

**IMPORTANT! Only not really: there's a poll on my profile I would like to ask you to vote on- I'm eager to see how do you view the main OC. the question is: what do you think is Akane's horoscope sign? Trust me, I myself don't really believe in horoscope, but it's interesting to see what do you guys think. Please vote, if only for fun. ;)**

**Reviews are always much, much appreciated. *hinthint*  
**


	29. Homo sum

**Chapter twenty-nine:**

**Homo sum**

**(humani nil a me alienum puto )**

**A/N: Um... hello? Try not to make me feel bad about not updating the whole summer. I try, I really do. ^^'**

**But there was this college exam, two of them actually, then came the English Proficiency exam, fourthly the driving exam, THEN came the beautiful, beautiful period of relaxation I so absolutely deserved and then...Well, then came my very first writers block. -_-' Important thing? I lived. Wrote the blasted chapter about 95% [maybe you've seen it on my profile page?], only to have my usb suddenly turn sadistic and erase it! Yup. I almost died of a hear-attack too.**

**So, the point of this is- no 'took you long enough' comments! No 'well, I must say this chapter severely lacks in quality' remarks. I already know all of this, trust you me. Thank you for all the reviews (replies to anonymous reviews are on my profile, of course), and a big warm welcome to all those new readers who clicked the 'Favourite' or 'Alert' button. Much appreciated.**

**Here's a [strangely enough for TpoL] **_**lighter **_**chapter for you and poor Akane. You have to be in a somewhat-patient mood to read it though. If you're not, then just read it some other time. Despite all of its flaws, I still hope you enjoy it, if only a little bit. ;)**

* * *

The first time the soothsayer slept without nightmares or exhaustion-induced torpor she dreamed of a field- the same yellow meadow she had only caught a glimpse of during her nights in the Sound. Now, more vivid than ever, she saw how it was burgeoning with these_ adorable _tiny yellow flowers that whistled some merry cheerful ditty she had heard years ago in Looney Tunes; the sky overhead was an especially flamboyant shade of pink today. She was sitting under a huuuge tree, and she was nothing but a big, bright smile with a pair of lacy gloves and a wide lady's hat, having the most _pleasant _little chat with Mr. Squirrel and-

That was the morning Akane realized just how doped up she actually was.

She confided in Koshiro, informing him in her usual imperious manner that she was not truly insane (she had decided that she was_ not _insane and that was it!_)_, that she was going to stop taking the medicine for hallucinations and that he was going to tell her which ones they were. _Now._

"But you're gonna continue taking the anti-depressants, aren't you?" was all the boy asked, and upon getting her slightly delayed but still positive answer, he complied with her request. Just like that- he wasn't even going to consult with her doctors. _If you don't want to take them, who are they to make you? _He said simply, shrugging his shoulders. Then he obediently brought the gawking Akane a glass of water. It was so simple, she thought, bewildered over his compliance. Everything was too darn simple with him!

"Will you just stop being so nice?" she said one day, while he was fluffing her pillow with exceptional care. The smallest of kind gestures from him made her feel like she herself was an awful, terrible person. "Seriously now, why can't you be like these other doctors and nurses and just run away from this blasted room? My madness might wiggle its way up your nose or something, you know..."

At this unexpected, lame, but very first hence precious invitation for a conversation from her (it was indeed a form of kindness from a person such as Akane) the student laughed good-humouredly. "Sorry, can't," he threw her a devilish wink, "First I get the certificate and the awesome white coat, and_ then_ I get to be a jackass."

It was pleasantly odd, Akane thought. While the boy's voice was, as always, bubbling with sarcasm, his sarcasm was... light-hearted. Joking. Kind. She had never heard anything like it before. She liked the way his silent laughter shook his handsome shoulders and warmed the air, how his colourful, playful comments danced around her white room like spots of refracted light.

In reality, the room was dull with shades of gray, due to another sunless, inky afternoon. The fly buzzed monotonously somewhere above her head. A soft repetitive chirping came from just outside the window. Everything was so peaceful it almost made one want to whisper. So she did. Because in spite of everything...

"Koshiro?"

"Hmm?" the boy was turned with his back to her, upper parts of his torso buried in the closet.

"Explain to me. Explain why you are wasting your time with me. You did it on purpose, I know you did- switch with my previous nurse, that is," an inquisitive, stubborn tilt spilled her long hair over her shoulders, "Just why did you do that?"

...in spite of everything, Akane didn't understand him. She didn't understand him at all.

Her question, amazingly, didn't move the boy from the spot like the girl hoped it would. On the contrary: his calmness, like he had absorbed the serenity of the day, suggested that he had expected it even. "Well, that's easy," Koshiro straightened up, folded another sheet, and turned his back to her again to put it in the closet, "You remember the first time we saw each other? In the hallway? You were coming out of that geezer Adagawa's office...?"

Akane could only give a blank look at this. "What?" she shook her head slowly in thought, "No. We met in my room. You insulted me." She cleared her throat a bit, "Trust me, I remember things like that."

The answer evoked a strange reaction from Koshiro – his shapely, silvery eyes widened in something similar to hurt. "What? You don't remember me... then... but I thought... ok, look, nevermind," the student scratched his head, as if embarrassed. The look was rather endearing on him, Akane thought for a millisecond, before the scrawny thought ran away in panic before her fat abusive denial.

"Alright. So the first time I saw you, you had this... aura about you... great, how do I explain this..." he combed his hand through his hair quickly, puffed air through his mouth, and began, "You know that feeling when you see someone and you just think, without any rational reason, 'This is a weird person'?"

_...seriously?_

"There _**was **_a completely rational reason: this is a _Mental_ Health Department," she pointed out. Her lips unconsciously tightened in irritation. _What kind of explanation is this? _

"No, not like that, but, like," the boy waved his hand, as if he was trying to fish the appropriate words out of the air, "like when you see someone and you just_ feel_ that _that _person, right there, is gonna influence, that is, change your life somehow? You instinctively _know_ that it's someone who is going to have an important impact on you." He gave one of his characteristic, soundless laughs. "Well... yeah, that's the feeling I got. In that one moment," he finished, looking at her, "I just _knew_ I had to meet you."

The bird whisked up into the sky, swinging the branches of the conifer. They brushed against the window glass, making a quaint sound. Soft, like the rustle of a veil.

She lay, he stood, squinting at each other, gray and green eyes. Both searching for something one in another, but neither of them recognizing what they were looking for: one not the acknowledgment he craved, the other not the humour she expected.

"That is," Akane told him, forthright, "the stupidest explanation I've ever heard."

Koshiro looked at her like her disbelief was outrageous. "Come on, don't tell me you've never felt anything intuitively before?"

"I don't believe in intuition," the soothsayer said, prepared for his question, "And even if I did, I would never rely on it."

"Why in the world not?"

She stretched her skinny arms above her. "As I see it, intuition is similar to prejudice. One 'intuitively' just 'knows' that someone's a bad person, for example, so he automatically dislikes that person, without bothering to know him or her first. It's nothing but unfair." Kindly, she gave the boy a moment for her words to sink in. "Ever thought of that?"

"Ok, yeah, you _do _have a point there," Koshiro rubbed the back of his neck, "but intuition has never failed me in my life. It's a natural instinct, you know? So how can it be all bad? If you can't explain it fully it doesn't mean that intuition doesn't have its own system by which it operates. Emotions, also. Maybe we, as humans, just can't research them on the level like we investigate the rational mind, you know? If you don't understand it or believe in it, it doesn't mean it isn't right and that you should just shun it aside."

"In a sense," he gripped his chin in thought, "it seems to me that the mind is the simplest to understand of the three."

At this, Akane straightened up in her bed, mouth slightly parted. _Did he...? Oh yes he did! Koshiro has just constructed a proper argument!_ Oh, she disagreed with him and knew she could argue it back, of course, but she didn't expect _him_, Koshiro, the comical and promiscuous male-nurse, to have it in him to actually _think _about something more abstract! It was an amazing discovery! She was just about to congratulate him on using that single brain cell of his for once, when the boy added with a wolfish grin, "Anyway, gotta go. Hosting a party with lots of booze and pretty girls tonight, and I gotta use my_ incredible_ intuition to sense which one's drunk the most."

Green eyes flashed. "...drunk the most?"

"...what?"

".._.drunk_ the most?"

"...why are you looking at me like that?"

"That's. It!" Akane suddenly sank back into her pillow. She rolled her eyes, frustrated with his behavior. "I can't even grasp your way of thinking! It's random, illogical, _completely_ whimsical, not to mention_** primitive-**_!"

"Akane-chan, are you... jealous?" Koshiro sounded so immensely self-satisfied that she wanted to smack the smug look right off his face.

"Oh don't you get sassy with me!" the girl tch-ed indignantly, "You, you-! In one moment you're this... this_ simpleton, _then the next you emit actual, maybe even above average intelligence. And then!" She shook her head in outrage, "Then you just _smartly _regress! You're so... gah! Do you do anything in your spare time except party and goof off?"

Koshiro looked at the ceiling. "I..." seemingly in serious thought for a moment, "...I bring you food?"

"And that must be the highlight of your day!" the eighteen-year-old smiled sarcastically, pushing the empty tray aside with her elbow.

"It is."

...she choked on a breath. Looked up at him. The gray-eyed boy was looking at her in a peculiar way. "I just figured it out. It kinda..." he stopped, a sheepish smile fleeting over his face, "You know what? It really is."

Not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do, Akane hid her eyes from him on reflex; a silly, teen-like motion to which Koshiro gave a hearty laugh. "See you tomorrow, Akane." The door closed softly behind him and as it did, an uncharacteristically soft breath left the girl's lips.

_Tomorrow. Tomorrow. And tomorrow. He's always there. He is... the only one there. Every tomorrow._

She was finally beginning to understand.

* * *

All the flesh that had been eaten away by stress gradually started to come back to her bones. The Sound escapee ate more than ever, sometimes even asking for seconds. Her hips curved again, her legs shaped- _well I'll be, if this continues, I may even look like a female again._ Much to her disbelief, soon enough she was even allowed to use a razor. A_ razor!_ Colour slowly began to return to her sickly-white cheeks, although her naturally pale complexion stuck unyieldingly beneath her skin.

After a long period of lethargy, Akane was becoming aware of her appearance again: it was an awkward moment when the girl realized that she had lost her scrunchy a long time ago, that day when she had escaped from Sound, and that her hair was out of the tight braid, spread long and free down her back- such a simple fact, but a fact she was only now noticing. Koshiro once commented that she was '_positively glowing_', but she attributed the flattery to his flirtatious nature. Still, the fact remained:

Akane was getting _better._

She felt_ real_ again, and the air smelled like real air again, and suddenly she realized that she probably shouldn't let that fly skip so freely around her food. The endless jabbering of children beneath her window stopped making her want to stuff her head under the pillow. The rain smelled of hope and fresh beginnings, not of death. The town of Konoha sounded alive- the world was _alive_. _Just on the other side of the wall!_ And Akane wanted to try to be human once more. How did she say it that time? To 'feel' life. To 'taste' it. Yes, the eighteen-year-old just wanted to live again.

Yet despite all of it, her surroundings remained alien to her. Maybe even more so than before. It was a feeling like she was a confused tourist in some remote country whose customs she didn't understand, too far away from home. Completely alone, with no dictionary with useful phrases, no information-desk, no help-service to tell her exactly how to get out of any unpleasant situations. She had to choose her words herself, to orientate herself, to survive _completely _on her own. In rare moments of weakness, Akane felt like a child lost in a huge mall, in a sea of adults rushing about, too absorbed in their own affairs to spare her any notice. And all the child wanted was to find her doll, her only friend. Desperately. With lots of temper tantrums along the way.

Even though the air of melancholy was still distinct around her, her mood-swings were getting less frequent and so she asked Koshiro to stay longer hours and talk to her- a strange request he was strangely happy to oblige. In fact, his unhidden happiness was such that she fully expected him to start gamboling around her feet. As a result of her new, slightly humble approach to him, the male, naturally, developed a touch more bold approach to her than usual- which kept her mindful of his fickle, superficial nature.

They talked. Weather, food, school. It felt surprisingly... _normal. _What was it that made her seek comfort in his formerly-obnoxious company? Was it boredom? Or a sense of superiority? Or honest, youthful curiosity? Something entirely else? All that she knew was that the long conversations they had (which had a tendency to turn into fights of pigeons for crumbs, with lots of quarrels and pushing and flapping of the wings but secret, unspoken coordination underneath it all) seemed to mend the cords in her brain just as the antidepressants did, if not more. It was impossible not to catch Koshiro's honest, positive attitude, like the most harmless flu. Yes, there were difficult moments, when Koshiro would get intolerably ribald or Akane's temper would rear its ugly head, but they were soon forgotten thanks to Koshiro's wonderful power of almost saint-like forgiveness and Akane's fascinating power of 'whatever, you idiot'.

Time was passing by quickly but softly now, flowing, like water, and it was useless to divide it into months and days, hours and minutes. In any case, Akane was unable to keep up with it. Most of her time she spent unconscious, in a deep, hazy sleep- a side-effect of the antidepressants that she couldn't shake off no matter how stubbornly she willed her eyelids remain open.

When awake, she felt like herself again, true, but it was as if some invisible hand had dismantled her, and then rashly assembled her together again, if it's even possible to imagine such a feeling. Her brain was so sore, so stiff, so _heavy._ Slumber purred next to her ear like a cat, the most endearing of all thieves, and stole her thoughts. She slept hours on end, woke up heavy-headed and sweaty, blinking away the headache, the ghastly feeling rivaling that of a particularly bad hangover.

Every time she woke up Koshiro would be there, with a stupid, proud smile on his face, like her progress was all his doing _(it__** is**__, actually, but you'll never admit it),_ lingering beside her bed with a clean hospital-gown for her, immaculate sheets and a gentlemanly turn of his back so she could change. With Koshiro faithfully by her side whenever she came about, the cold, scaly quality of her silence that used to frighten the doctors was no more.

On her days of restricted human contact Akane had even, oddly enough, found herself longing to hear a 'Good night' or 'Bless you' or any of those polite trivialities that confirm to one that he's noticed. Only when he's rid of them does a person realize how much one nice, polite word means. That's why Koshiro seemed like a true string of sunshine on his daily checkups... and then another bundle of sunshine joined him during some of those merry visits.

The bundle included a pair of equally silver, equally pretty eyes, two round cheeks, a pair of short but hyperactive legs and arms, clean and milky-white in all their remaining baby-fat. Somehow and for some reason Koshiro managed to sneak in the aforementioned bundle called 'Aki', or more affectionately 'baby brother', under an excuse that some more human contact would do her good.

On Aki's first visit, after he ran twenty-three circles around her room clockwise and then another speedy four in the opposite direction, bouncing off the walls like a rubber ball, the miniature version of Koshiro finally stopped, bored or exhausted or, hopefully, both, threw his hands over the rail of her bed and stood up on his toes to peer curiously at her from underneath the bird-nest of his hair. His cheeks were red from running and his nose filled with buggers. _Adorable._ Trying to look aloof, Akane ignored him completely.

"I have to tell you something," the little boy whispered suddenly, loud enough for the entire hospitalto hear him, "It's a big, _big_ secret."

Akane shot an annoyed look at Koshiro's back. Then, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at the kid, she slowly leaned forward, prompting, "Well?" _Come on. Humour me._

Aki looked left, then right, and leaned next to hear ear, only to speak in a normal, non-hushed voice. "Both of our names start with the letter A," the boy shared with her, sounding mightily wise and observant over the fact. Pulling back, she saw a small black hole in his smile where he had lost a baby tooth.

The soothsayer stared at old was this kid again?

For some reason, the little chipmunk thought that she was impressed by his brilliance, and thus he continued to explain to her, a ridiculously serious expression on his chubby cheeks, "But my name is A-ki, and you're A-ka-ne, so they're written with _completely_ different kanji."

"Gee, that's... smart."

"I know, right?" Koshiro called over his shoulder as he folded another white sheet over his arm, "Yup, he's smart after his older brother, of course, 'cause he's always-"

"I was being sarcastic."

He turned around in time to meet one of her trademark challenging looks. Preparing a comeback, he shrugged his shoulders noncommittally and returned to folding sheets. "Meh, I wouldn't know," he said, "You always speak in that one boring tone."

"I most certainly do not," she puffed her chest, ready for an argument.

It seemed to her that the student prompted her to speak only so he could oppose her, and so she could antagonize him back. But... there was no malice in any of it. Koshiro kept joking all the way, not taking seriously neither what he was saying, nor what he was hearing. It was a new and amusing take on the world, especially considering his talent to, paradoxically, in trivial conversations find clever arguments and dip them into crazy and imaginative colours.

He was intelligent yet superficial, a combo Akane didn't ever think possible. Indeed, by some logic, _her _logic, she had always thought, a bit patronizingly, that shallow people were less intelligent, without exception. Yet here he was, this random, insignificant-to-the-Narutoverse background character Koshiro, proving her wrong_; _he was a breathing example of how little she knew of people and the real world. It made her feel confused and, in a strange way, hurt and, well, simply speaking, it was a great hit to her 'analytical' ego.

So whenever her heartbeat sped up as Koshiro entered the room, Akane convinced herself that it was because she was irritated by his presence. In truth, she felt that another, smaller heart was beating inside of her now, gentle like the pulse on the neck, almost soundless beneath the angry drumming of her bigger, poisoned one. This realization scared her and soon Akane turned more detached than ever in the student's presence.

"Something eating ya up?"

"No," the girl answered stonily, throwing him a look that made him back off all the way over to the other end of the room.

"Ok, ok, forget that I asked," Koshiro brought his hands up to shield against her glare. "Just curious as to why you're acting like a stick in the mud..." his lip quirked, "...more than usual, that is."

While he was speaking, she felt that invisible hand again, touching her soul this time, turning the keys of the mechanism of her being one by one; screws clattered, strings vibrated, and soon her mind rang with only one thought:

_This can't be happening to me..._

Akane had never been in love, not truly. Sure, there had been a few boys in her school, here and there, relationships based more on simple teen curiosity than any romantic feelings. Even so, Akane had always known perfectly well what kind of a man she would eventually end up with: in a nutshell, he was going to be intelligent, handsome was a 'why not', he was going to be mature, calm, sort of a dominating, confident type. A bit on the arrogant side, so they could slap each other around if bored. Or at least, that had been her sixteen-year-old-self ideal.

If so, what was this? Please, would somebody care to explain, _what was this now?_

No, it wasn't right. He wasn't right for her at all. Koshiro was childish, whereas she wanted serious, Koshiro was boisterous and passionate, whereas she wanted firm and reticent, Koshiro was... Koshiro was so many miles away from her ideals that she shouldn't have given him a second thought! Where did all that high criteria of hers go? Through which darn cracks of the earth did they slip away and leave her so stupid, so helplessly _**emotional,**_ so...

_(Happy.)_

Dear.

Lord.

Dear Lord she was _happy_, and for the first time in many weeks _(months? years?) _she could say that with certainty. But- but- but she couldn't let this _happen! _

She was supposed to become heartless. She had promised to herself that she would never let herself be hurt by guilt again, that she would never trust anybody again, that she would do _anything_ to find Hana, that she would step over corpses if the need arose! She was supposed to-

To hell with it all! She had dreamed of becoming like that for so long- but now, when shook awake, realized that she _hated_ that dream! Because she didn't want to be like that.

So she started to think that the dreadful moment of her departure would never come and, though embarrassed by these selfish hopes, felt incredibly relieved. She wanted to forever spend the days in which she would talk to Koshiro and secretly stroke him with tender glances; the days during which he brought her strength back with his boyish smile and warm, exciting eyes. She just wanted those days.

_Stupid, weak girl! s_he thought, furious with herself, _Why must you delude yourself so! _Why? Because she wanted an escape- plain and simple. She wanted an escape from duty, escape from pretense. She didn't dare acknowledge these reasons, maybe because she was afraid of those exact reasons, and so she left them in the darkness, unrecognized, but aware of their existence.

_I'll think about it later, there's still time, maybe Tsunade won't remember, I'll think about it __**later,**_ she buried the thoughts, delayed the reality, because she was so sick of it, even though she knew that she shouldn't, wouldn't and_ couldn't _stay in Konoha forever. Christ, maybe she wouldn't even be there tomorrow! Her days in the hospital had been meant for sheer waiting and planning, not for... for... _this_, whatever it was.

The moment she stepped out of Konoha it would be all over. She would again be Akane the Soothsayer, the cold, frightened girl on a mission. Penniless, with no shelter, no food, no clothes of her own, with _nothing_ of her own, except her bitterness. Here, she had _him_. She had Koshiro. That was all that mattered. She had somebody who actually caredfor her. She had somebody who loved her... and who she could love back.

"Oh come on, cheer up, will ya?" the boy's grinning face swam in front of her through the sea of thoughts and, suddenly, she froze up as she felt his hand touch her cheek.

In an instant, Akane jerked back.

Unnatural silence fell upon them, like the two of them were completely alone on the bottom of some deep, horribly deep pit.

"_Don't_ do that," she hissed, looking at him with unfeigned surprise. She rubbed the spot against her raised shoulder.

"I... there was..." taken aback by her jump Koshiro stuttered, "...your hair..." Then he went mute.

"Sorry," he finally mumbled out, "I'm... kinda fond of you, that's all."

"Well, I'm..." A pause. _(I'm... also sort of fond of you...) _"That's... nice," said Akane in a delayed soft voice, with a sort of sigh.

He didn't look at her again for the next few minutes, instead continuing to gaze out of the window. His face held a doleful expression, pitifully masked by a bland smile. The silence pressed her earlobes painfully, yet she couldn't bring herself to say a word.

"Ne, Akane-chan... how old are you, anyway?" the student asked her out of the blue. For some reason the simple question confused her. She closed her eyes in concentration, _I feel one thousand years old; one thousand silences and deceits and badly cooked meals, _and opened them, "Well, that depends... what month is it?"

Nice to see her disorientation in time and space was entertaining to him, she thought, as his reply came in a form of an amused chuckle, "March, almost." "You've been here for around four months now," he added, more reluctantly.

Hearing this Akane allowed herself a small smile, "Then I've been nineteen for two months. I was born at the beginning of January... which means I've been nineteen for two months now- and I didn't even know it." A shadow passed over her eyes. "Nineteen. Imagine that. What a stupid number. And I was only sixteen when..." her voice had grown weaker as she spoke, leaving the last sentence nothing more than a breath.

"Damn... you should have told me it was your birthday," Koshiro said, stepping closer to her, "I would've bought you a present or something."

"You didn't ask. I didn't remember." there was a lump growing inside her throat, made of unspoken words and secrets. "Don't be stupid, it's not like I would have celebrated it..."

"Well I don't know about you, but _here_, on _this_ planet, we actually celebrate birthdays," Koshiro grinned and-

And suddenly, completely randomly, Akane felt the need to tell him. Confess everything to him. She wanted him, no, she _needed_ him to know. "Not a different planet but..." she blurted out, voice shaking with excitement.

"What? What did you say?" Koshiro leaned in to her, and only then did she notice how close he was to her, so, so _unbearably_ close, as if eager to hear her out, to accidentally touch her, and his hair smelled beautiful as she tilted her head up, lips brushing his jaw, putting her fingers to the sides of his face, bringing him even closer to her-

In the next moment, she was whispering into his ear.

"I'm from a different world."

* * *

His eyes grew wide.

His breathing stopped.

Pulling back, tentatively, Koshiro studied her face. His look was intense, with an odd glimmer to it. _Any minute now_, Akane thought, _he's going to explode with laughter. Right... about..._

_now._

"Well that_ would_ explain many things," the student merely stated, voice calm and confident, like he had just confirmed to himself something he had suspected all along.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Speechless.

Akane's jaw fell. Completely and utterly _speechless_. A few long moments she kept staring at him in a stupor.

"You..." her voice came out thin, squeaky, "...you believe me?"

A blade of panic pierced her through her lungs at the prospect of such a situation. _What now? How could he-! How could I have-? What should I do! What should-!_

A cheeky smile broke through his serious expression. "Nah, of course I don't. I think you're one helluva imaginative girl." Koshiro shook his head, smiling, "But it explains why you act the way you do. Why you distance yourself from people so much. You must think that you're so different from everybody else that you feel like you don't belong here, don't you? Listen, everybody feels like that once in a while, especially in adolescent age, but that doesn't mean-"

_...you're wrong! _she wanted to shout out, _You. are. __**WRONG! **_How could she explain to him that she dreaded every second in this world? Every second that could change something and badly screw everything up?_ Dear God, that I dread to _breathe _the same air as ninjas? That I dread to __**live**__? That I feel guilty for everything that has happened so far? That I just want to go _home_ to my parents, that I will _never _be ready to face such a world on my own! That beneath Akane, Elisa is __**screaming**__ in helplessness! That everything is wrong, wrong,_ **wrong,** _and I won't come to the terms with it, I just _won't,_ I will never understand the mechanism of it all!_

_**How can I? !  
**_

It couldn't have lasted more than a moment, enough for a blink of an eye, and the brash young man was standing in front of her again, blabbering with an affectionate smile- he didn't hear anything, didn't feel the avalanche of emotions inside of her, undisturbed by the madness that raged inside of her. It came, like a tempest, after all the torment and worrying after Hana, after the doubts about the world which shook her to the core, and swept away her cherished stone barriers, leaving only debris and devastation.

_Oh God, bring me to my senses._

"Go," she said quietly.

The student halted in a middle of a sentence. Glanced at her. But he didn't move.

"Go _away,_" she repeated sterner this time, because he was a witness of her weakness, deaf and blind to it, but he had still been there and Akane didn't want to be embarrassed in front of him. Nor to hate him. She didn't want him in her sight.

Confused by the change in her demeanor, Koshiro put his hand over hers in a soothing manner, "Akane, I-" She slapped it to the side. "Hey! What's with you all of a sudden?" he took back his hand, narrowing his eyes, "I just said-"

"I do see your point," she lied, in cold fury, "That is, after all, why I'm here, isn't it? To... _disillusion_ me."

"Ok, I don't know what's gotten into you, but I thought you were past your four-month-PMS-ing period." The boy narrowed his eyes further, getting annoyed, "Look, I was just trying to be nice here- I wanted to tell you that you're not alone, I know how you feel-"

"Oh, _you_ know how I feel," she sneered, a faint gleam of crystallized irony in her eyes. "You know what's it like to be drowning the moment you were born in the world; you know what's it like to be stripped of all of you ambitions and comforts, thrust into a world with no family and friends to eek out a living." Words disgourged from her mouth like blood from an open wound. "_You_ know what's it like to _die_, to be locked up underground in a four-wall coffin, to walk down barren hallways day after day _after day,_ to have only one person. _One_," she emphasized with a hiss, "_**single.**_ person in the whole damn world who views things as you do, knows thing like you know them, remembers faces that you do, who..." Choking on the torrent of words, "Who you _hope_ can understand you, who... whose presence you cling to because she's _the only_ part of your past that you have left!"

Silence.

A sigh.

_Breathe._

Broken.

Shattered.

_**Breathe.**_

"But sometimes..." she continued, voice low and chilling. "When you're all alone, you forget who it is that you're fighting for. Because it is just _too hard_. You find yourself wanting to give up and abandon her. And you hate yourself for it. Hate the world." Their eyes met, "Hate _her_."

"I get it," Koshiro said with a peaceful tone, "I see it now, right? I get i-"

She cut him off with an almost hysterical shriek, "No you don't! No you don't and don't you dare say that! Cause youdon't_ know_ a blasted thing. You don't knowhow hard it is. How _**damn hard**_ it is to feel so ripped apart! To be shredded, in every single bloody way, locked up, humiliated, exploited, how it feels to be bound and _helpless! Don't you see? _They've all dissected me into millions of layers, none of which is _me, _none of which I can hold onto! And you want to know the worst thing?" The girl looked at him with unforgettable eyes, in which cold anger and hot tears mixed. "The worst thing is that_** I myself**_ don't know what I _am_ anymore in that disgusting, _disfigured_. **pile**. of. _**nothing**_!" she cried out, pressing her face into her hands as if to drown herself.

. . .

Another silence ensued, falling around them like papery ashes: lifeless, gray and heavy.

"... none of you can possibly understand," she murmured between her fingers. Then she dropped her hands to her knees, accusing in a quiet, sharp tone, "Here, in Konoha, you all get comfortable and play all the time, and the sun always shines in your heads, but the truth is you're all fucked up!"

"You're right."

"Of course I'm-" she stopped. A short breath caught inside her mouth. Then she exhaled it, and as she did, it trembled in the air, "...what did you just say?"

Koshiro sighed, looking out of the window, "I said, you're right."

* * *

He was pacing the room now: the edgy, nervous tempo of his steps instead of his usual confident strides made her instantaneously wary. "Listen..." he said, "I grew up listening about the great Will of Fire. How people found strength inside of themselves even in the most difficult of times, how they fought ferociously for the village. Akane, do you know what happened to those people?" he turned to her.

"They all died."

Akane jumped rigid in the bed, frozen up. Not so much because of his words, but because his face held a chilling expression, one that suited more a face of a raven-haired boy she had once lived with than Koshiro, the playful, laid-back Koshiro, the male nurse she liked to poke fun at._ Eye__s overflowing with __an__ger. _Not Koshiro. Not him...

"Koshiro..." One breath; one prolonged, exaggerated wetting of the upper lip. Yet her words smashed against her teeth, stuck on her tongue.

The boy dropped to the chair beside the bed, pressing his fingers against his forehead. It seemed to her as if he were trying to stop himself from speaking, like when one is trying to swallow a blasphemous insult. Despite his effort, the words, unstoppable, spilled from his throat.

"They all _died,_ Akane," he emphasized, "with a fucking smile on their faces." It came ringing about the room, strange and empty. A thin, mocking smirk that just _didn't belong there_ trembled on the boy's lips. "They died and smiled, thinking that they'd reached an epiphany, that they did something great in their lives, and that their loved ones would be ok. That the village would be ok. In other words, they died believing in a_ lie_."

"And do you know why those people thought this way?" his tone suddenly turned more acidic, "It's because they were _taught so_. That's how this system works. Teach the children to say 'kunai' or 'shinobi' before they can even say 'okaasan' or 'otousan'!" His hands twitched and clenched fiercely in his lap. "Since the last Great War it's not like that, they say. Since the concluded peace it's not that strict, that _humanity-depraving_ and mind-washing, they say. Then why are ninja still most sought after? Why are murders and frauds still the most paid business?"

"Why does my _**seven-year-old**_ brother," he rose to his feet now, trembling all over, his eyes fixed on her wide ones, "come to me from his so-called 'school', yelling _pridefully_ from top of his lungs how he's gonna fight and **DIE** like a 'true shinobi'one day?" In a flash of a moment, Akane wished Koshiro would hit something, hit _her_, if only to let it all out, to help him get a grip on himself. But then he stilled, looking down to the floor, and raised his head up again, unsure of what to do with himself.

"He's gonna smile too, Akane," the boy uttered listlessly, "He's gonna be lying in some dirty hole in the ground, like a starving dog, bleeding through his eyeballs, and he's gonna be _smiling _about it, feeling like he had accomplished something _magnificent_."

The long-haired girl wanted to shake her head, to tell him that it wouldn't happen to Aki. She wanted to console him, even lie to him, _anything,_ but remained quiet. He threw his hands into the air, speaking in a loud, laughing voice, "And all those people got is a rock! Can you believe it? A rock! Isn't that the most hilarious thing you've ever heard? Everything for the homeland!"

"Koshiro, you are..." she started, disturbed how his arms fell limp to his sides after that, suddenly drained of energy. "I never thought you are..." Any words she might have had for him evaporated. What was there even to say?

"Yes, I know I'm resentful," the student admitted, "But I... I know that the Will of Fire, under all the sugar and colorful, hopeful details, doesn't create free people, but fanatical patriots, who feel honored for being _allowed_ to die for an illusion_,_ for a dream that's not even their own, not for a moment considering the fact that they're leaving people of flesh and blood to burn their butchered remains. But that's ok, as long as those flames are of a 'Will of Fire' trademark, isn't it?"

The mockery hung in the air, like a cloud of thick smog. Combing his hand roughly through his hair, Koshiro exhaled through his nose, trying to compose himself. The girl on the bed watched him, frightened and fascinated and thrilled at the same time. The strength of his emotions amazed her.

"What I'm saying is... What I wanted to say is..." he struggled with words, sitting himself at the chair once more, right beside her. Silver eyes found green ones. "You're right. The truth is... that in that unfaltering, divine, happy patriotism... lies lots... and lots... of plain, human apathy."

When she finally snapped out of her daze, Akane found enough courage to address him again, "And what do you suppose we should do about it? What is the point of your bitterness?" For a moment, she felt as if she had just asked that question to herself. "Your views are extreme, if you ask me, but you are not the first person to criticize the militaristic society you live in. Koshiro, what is it you _want _really?"

His eyes brightened with enthusiasm. "Me? I want to live in a world where killing another being isn't a job, or a measure of strength, or looked upon with respect; where surviving isn't a feat to accomplish or a prize in itself, but a normal occurrence. I want to live in a world where people don't invent new techniques for having the upper hand, but strive to _create_..." he waved his hand in the air, "I dunno... invent machines, for example, that can_ connect_ people all over the world, help them _communicate_ freely and quickly even from the distance, or..."

"Who would've known," she said, slowly, a smirk soft with admiration pulling at her lips, "that you're such a pacifist, nurse-boy. But..."

She still remembered it all, as if from another life. The world with this amazing thing called 'the Internet' and its social networks, the telephone, the cars and airplanes. But then she remembered misery as well.

Pollution.

Riots.

_Wars._

"But your idealistic world is just that..." she sighed, "...a utopia. Where there's people there is conflict- where there's conflict there's no true peace. That's just the way we humans are."

He caught her unprepared when he started to chuckle, smiling at her with all his teeth, "What a load of bull, Akane. Do you honestly believe the human nature is rotten? You don't wanna believe that yourself! As a matter of fact..." He leaned in closer to her, as if to see if she would back away.

She didn't.

"As a matter of fact..." he taunted, "I think you're just scared."

Briefly cursing her inability to lift an eyebrow, the girl cocked her head to the side, drawling out in a daring voice, "Hah, really now? Tell me, do I look scared to you?"

Koshiro leaned in more to her, his warm breath fanning on her cheek now, his torso brushing on her shoulder, and for one crazy, breathless fraction of a minute, Akane thought that he was going to kiss her. Air fluttered in her neck. But he only lingered there, head next to her head, breathing into her hair.

"_Terrified,_" he whispered against her ear.

"And tired," Koshiro added cheekily, pulling back. "Terrified and tired. I'm just curious to the question..." there was no amusement in his next words, as his face straightened in complete seriousness, "...when did you allow yourself to become so _weak_?"

. . .

Anger exploded in her skull.

"You think... I'm _weak?_" her whole body shook in rage as she gritted through her teeth, "After everything I've been through, after everything I've survived, you have_ the nerve _to call ME we-!"

"I consider a weakling anyone who doesn't stay true to himself," Koshiro pushed her further, "anyone who doesn't strive to be better because he thinks there's simply no point in it. You are pretending, Akane, pretending to be cruel and apathetic and from all that pretense you've turned selfish! You are selfish with your goals, ideas and emotions- you spare none on the people beside you! You dismiss even those who want to be close to you! And why? It's because you're afraid. It's only because you're cowardly afraid to be hurt."

"So what?" she challenged. "So what if I am? I can't change!" she shouted, wanting him to stop, "People cannot change and that's-"

"You are kind-hearted... Akane."

. . .

She was so flabbergasted she went silent.

The student smiled warmly at her, "Talking to you for these past few months I realized that you are truly a kind-hearted person. You are imaginative. You are passionate. On those rare occasions you allowed yourself to relax, I could see _you_. And guess what? You are a good person. But you don't allow yourself to be like that. Or you weren't allowed to, at least."

Before Akane could protest, Koshiro sat on the bed beside her. His hand found hers and pressed it into the sheet lightly. Only this time, _she couldn't make herself move away._ "You're safe now," he said, trying to catch her eyes, which seemed to look everywhere but at him, "You don't need that sarcasm and attitude to shield you... Sometimes it's better to let emotions touch you and just endure them. _That_ is the sign of true courage. And I know you are strong enough to take it head-on."

"I... I... " Her vacant, poisonous eyes dimmed to a brown shade; they were the doe-like eyes of a sixteen-year-old girl, relieved of bitterness, suggesting old vulnerability, but also- a new will to surpass it. "No," she willed the memory out of her eyes. "Sometimes feelings must fall pray to mind," she muttered weakly, but before she could turn her head away from him, the boy brought his hand under her chin.

"No more excuses," his other hand rested on her back gently. "Grieving is empty, sheer hoping is powerless. To act! To act, to fight the numbness, that is the only thing that can help you."

"Akane..." he murmured into her hair; his hands encircled her in an embrace. What was he doing? Why was she letting him do this? Why was her heart beating _so fast_? "I don't really know you, but I've been trying really, really hard to understand you. I feel that you are hiding many things from me," she immediately stiffened in his embrace, "but I don't care to pry."

"I don't care what you did against ninjas, or the nation, or the world," he went on, "I just want you to be better. Let me in, if only a little bit, will you? Because I have a feeling..." He stopped there, hesitating to continue.

Akane was very still in his arms, shocked, warm, unusually light-headed, feeling like a small child. The boy's chest rose and fell in deep, melodious breaths under her cheek. Around her, she inhaled a vague, attractive smell of aftershave and sweat. "I have a feeling that if I don't hold you like this," Koshiro continued, gliding his palms over her back in a caress, "you'll disappear. You'll go away and I'll never see you again..."

Enchanted by the gentility of the moment, she nestled her head at the soft curve of his neck.

Long ago had she acknowledged that this restless guy was a complete contrast to her. Everything he did was immature but innocent, everything he said was unacceptable by her standards, but still, he was the only one she could talk heart to heart. Because he was unhappy but honest, angry but peaceful, he didn't know what to do with himself, yet always knew exactly what he was doing. Because Koshiro came across as a goof-ball who liked nothing more than to party till the dawn and flirt with the girls but was, in fact, a complex individual with a rebellious attitude and idealistic wishes. In the end, he was one of the most inspiring people she had ever met... He made her immediately think of Naruto. He made her think of the sun. He was the first to make her want to feel at all.

And so in her kindled affection for the boy Akane loathed the rest of that world, with all its hypocrisy and assassins and pain. The only good, tenderness and humanity she found in Koshiro- she wanted only him, wanted to relieve his hidden sadness and dissatisfaction with the world in which, it seemed to her, they were united.

She felt so small next to the strong male body pressed against her as he held her close. She felt weak. But it was a strange form of weakness, enjoyable almost- one she had never felt before. It made her barriers slip away, bit by bit. It sipped through her clenched muscles, down her spine and finally, for the first time in years, Akane allowed herself to be supported by someone. A sort of a lull was overcoming her. Pleasant. Light. _I am pretending even now, _it breezed through her head, _this will never last, more of a fleeting dream than reality, but let me at least pretend that it'll never end._

_It's ok to pretend that I'll be happy like this forever._

Everything he did, his breathing, shifting, mere _being_ right there, beside her, palpable and real, made her blood burn. Whereas his skin was slightly flushed and warm, her skin was pale and icy- it needed someone to heat it up from the inside.

Almost shyly, Koshiro touched her with his calloused, slightly stiff fingers, trailing over her shoulders, collarbone, neck... There was something extraordinarily pure in his careful, slow motions; in one moment Akane had an inexplicable feeling that he had never been as affectionate with other girls as he was with her now. For her it was a new kind of awkward, not having had any intimate contact for so long. As if reading her mind Koshiro settled for the lightest, most innocent touches. Uncaring that it was a madhouse they found each other in, uncaring that she might've very well been really insane- or maybe it was him?- nothing mattered but the sudden rush of feelings between them, which was new and startling to both, and they savoured the moment desperately.

_It is as if he knows,_ the girl thought, _as if he, too, feels that any conversation may be our last... That this is more important... this one minute is more important and much longer than ten thousand nights. And... _She closed her eyes as she nestled herself against him,_ And it's alright to be born in a cruel, unknown world for just one warm, loving... moment._

"Akane, you are..." his lips traced her earlobe; she shuddered, "my biggest, most precious secret."

* * *

They spent the night like that, she and him, in mutual silence, breathing together. Marveling at everything and nothing in particular. The wind rattled the frame of the window. Pine-needles scratched the glass. Only that and them, breathing. Nobody entered the room and Koshiro never left, alongside her in the darkness. It was the brightest darkness either of them had ever seen... and they would have sat in it like that forever.

* * *

But the door burst open.

Several bone-white masks filled the room. ___No..._ Not yet! The sudden light that poured out of the hallway made her squeeze her eyes shut. _God, please not yet... _A rush of cold air swept over her as Koshiro jumped from her side.

"Hey," he staggered clumsily to his feet, putting himself between the group and Akane on instinct, "Who- What the hel-"

"Former prisoner of the Sound? Akane-san?" Their blank stares made the hair on her neck bristle. Glinting under the neon-lighting, the red-painted animal faces looked almost beastly.

Her head twitched in a mute nod at finally understanding. _The ANBU. _Just like she had anticipated months earlier, when she had wanted nothing more than to leave that place._ Nononono..._

They came for her.

"You are requested at the Hokage Tower. You are to come with us at once."

"What is this?" the student looked between them, bewildered, but remembering his duty he remarked in a dry, business-like voice, "Whatever it is I'm sure it can wait till tomorrow. This patient isn't well enough to-"

"Move aside, boy," the ANBU who seemed to be in charge stepped further into the room. By the slight strain in his voice it was clear he was aware how the said boy wasn't even supposed to be in a patient's room at such an hour. Luckily, he refrained from commenting on it. "Akane-san, please pack your belongings and come with us."

"No, this isn't right!"

"I'm ready."

All present turned to the girl. She had gotten to her feet, now standing a little behind Koshiro's right shoulder, slender in a white gown, rigid in stance. "I'm ready," she repeated quietly, "There's nothing to pack."

Only shadowed, downcast eyes. "Please take me to her."

"Wait," she jerked as Koshiro seized her by the elbow. The ANBU shifted in alarm. "Wait," he said more gently, holding her there, making her raise her head to look up at him. But he couldn't get any more words pass his lips. Instead, he studied her eyes, and in turn she studied his. He had incredibly silver eyes. Akane could feel her chest tightening, more and more, her heart thrashing until it became too painful to bear. _Stop it. I'm going to die. _Memorizing the light of his eyes, the almost blond eyelashes framing them, Akane wandered what what he must see in hers.

Could he read regret in those poisonously green irises of hers? Or pain? Or was it determination. Sparks of hate. But above all- _responsibility._ It was that mere word, the word that had buzzed in the back of her head from the moment she came to Konoha, that ripped their linked hands. _I have to go. _It was her unsaid choice; without an explanation, a truth or a lie, Koshiro understood.

There was nothing they could say to each other anymore.

_**It's time.**_

_Wait._

_**Thank you.**_

_. . . be safe._

Without a word, Akane turned her back to him and ran into the hallway with the guards. Dizzying lights flashed above her head. Tiles slipped bellow her feet. Light- blue walls. Outside. Black treetops. Chilling wind. _**I am outside.**_ Icy, wet air drenched her to the bones. A reddish glow outlined the roofs and chimneys, soft and bloody. With each new step she took, far away from the hospital, of the one cage she had made peace with, the soothsayer's eyes grew remote, her muscles tensed around her body, expression hardened.

On her lips, a single, warm kiss immediately began to cool…

* * *

_Amazing... how a dawn can be so dark._

* * *

**Translation: 'Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto' - 'I am a human b****eing: nothing human is foreign to me.'**

* * *

**A/N: There you have it. Maybe to some of you this may come across as a filler chapter, but it really isn't. In fact, it is quite important on a not-so-obvious level. **

**I've never written a 'romantic' scene in my life, so of course it's awful: I'm a writer of suspense dammit! ;) In any case, Koshiro and Akane might have had a real relationship and, then again, they might have not. With this, however, 'the Konoha arc' finishes. And I think you can guess what comes next, hehehe...**

**My very first day of college is tomorrow [...such a weird, weird feeling O.o], so any review is doubly appreciated. Not only will the shortest review cheer me up, but it'll also keep me writing. ^-^ I know it's not the end of the world but... meh, it kinda feels like it right now. :P Read the trivia bellow please:  
**

* * *

**Trivia:**

**-There is another **_**fanart of TpoL**_**, done by **_**GirXzimXfanatic**_**, who I must thanks once more for drawing it. ^^ C****heck it out- the link is **_**on my profile page,**_** alongside with other TpoL fanart.**

**-Akane's horoscope sign is **_**Capricorn**_**, decided in the previous poll.**

**-A NEW Poll!**** I'm going to be writing a BONUS CHAPTER **_**completely**_** from another character's point of view and YOU get to choose who it will be. ;)**

**Since TpoL is written mainly from Akane's pov, everything you have read is her own subjective perception of things- which means, of course, as every human being, she might have misjudged some people or situations. Wouldn't it be fun to read some scenes from another character's perspective, what someone else **_**really**_** thought about her? Go to my profile page and vote up to **_**two choices**_**! The poll will be closed two weeks from today and I'll write the one-shot/drabble as soon as I can. :)**


	30. Amici fures temporum

**Chapter thirty (BONUS chapter):**

**Amici fures temporum**

**AN: ****It's totally your fault- you all just had to go and pick the character that is the most difficult to write... -.- Of course, this is only my interpretation of him: you have no idea how hard it is to try and achieve a mix of an ambitious, apathetic avenger, a fussy, self-centered male teenager, a dark future-antagonist, and a truly lonely, tragic figure. Namely, Uchiha Sasuke.  
**

**Now edited, but still not completely satisfied with it.  
**

* * *

_*The first time Uchiha Sasuke saw the long-haired girl, he almost didn't see her at all.*_

The boy didn't know what point Orochimaru was trying to make _this _time (not that he ever did, for that matter) but honestly, he could've cared less. The man's fondness for dramatic exhibitions of power and useless cruelty were a mundane routine Sasuke had never quite gotten used to. The raven-haired boy folded his arms in an obvious gesture of boredom: if only the Sannin would take the hint soon at just how little the show impressed him and dispose of the prisoners quickly, so _he _could resume his training...

With nothing else to do, the teenager lazily turned his eyes to Kabuto. The medic was speaking to him (_something about Konoha's ninjas? Of course_, he thought, _who else)_ which Sasuke didn't even bother to follow. Instead he gave him the usual cold glare, activating the sharingan as the means of getting his point across more effectively. At this mute, biting response, Kabuto's smile twitched only for a second, forever smug, before he continued to address Orochimaru in the same self-important manner, oozing servitude. "We were wrong though. I befriended the girl and ca..." his voice faded in and then quickly out of the young Uchiha's attention, which he promptly switched to the objects of the conversation.

The first prisoner, he observed more closely now, was actually a young girl. She was sprawled in a pile of yukata, damp with grime, and wiping her cut lip franticly with the sleeves. Her skin was oddly... _brown?_ This was what had piqued the boy's flimsy interest in the first place. She had a strange face- very full, very dark lips, thick black hair, and there was something strong and foreign in her facial structure overall. Sasuke remembered hearing that the people in Thunder country were dark-skinned, but had never seen such a person with his own eyes. His missions had never taken him far into that territory, neither with the Leaf nor with the Sound, as Orochimaru always made it a point to have him run errands in the vicinity of the base they occupied at the given moment.

There was a rare tingle of curiosity in his mind as he continued to watch the girl (shapely but no muscle, impractical clothing- a civilian no doubt), invisible to her in the shadows. Not that him staring would make _him_ uncomfortable in any way (of course not) but he felt it was rude in a sense of manners- manners that were still deeply integrated into him, as if carved into the ancient bones of all the Uchiha.

Makeup caked and sticking pink and dry all over her face, the girl was staring up blindly at Kabuto, who towered above her bound form with his back turned indifferently to her. Her mouth was dangling open, as if she was about to cry out, plead, scream for help- but discovered that she couldn't. Even from the distance between them it was not hard to see that her whole body had broken down in tremors. From the way her rib-cage shook with ragged, shallow breaths, Sasuke could easily predict that the girl was on the brink of fainting from sheer lack of oxygen.

Several feet away from her- his eyes flicked over- an even younger girl was curled, bent over her own knees, looking catatonic, like she wasn't even aware of where she was. She was as skinny as a stick, but completely still, her head hanging low and face covered with ropes of very long, greasy hair.

This was all such a waste of his _time._

The boy refrained from shifting impatiently in his spot, but felt his jaw tighten all the same. He could've been training right now. He was _supposed_ to be training or, at least, sleeping in order to save his strength for it. They had lost four whole days in just getting to this base all the way from the Land of Rivers upon receiving Kabuto's supposedly 'urgent' message. But this_._.. -his hand absentmindedly slid to the hilt of his katana.-_** this**_ he was quickly getting tired of.

An endless prattle about chakra, and blood cells, and some peasant village, yet more mention of Konoha, but not a word about his next training session or the Akatsuki or anything even remotely useful.

Orochimaru stood at some point and stepped closer to the prisoners, obviously enjoying the way the more silent of the girl recoiled and the other looked away in fear, judged by the grin he was wearing. The man laughed as the long-haired girl failed to provide him the answers he was looking for and soon enough he was making a sarcastic attempt at small-talk with her. It was a recurring situation, a pointless ritual of Orochimaru's that Sasuke was more than familiar with- it only meant that the prisoner wouldn't have long to live if she didn't give a correct answer next time around.

But the girl in question was so easy to manipulate that Sasuke soon lost interest once again: her head had snapped up as soon as a snake coiled itself around her skinny neck, forcing her head up to meet Orochimaru's eyes. For a moment the boy thought the Sannin had made her see her own death _(kunai stabbed through his__ face, blood rippling from his skin-_ the memory briefly flashed in his mind- _the feeling of dying in a thousand ways and the reek of complete helpless__ness and how he __**hated**__ the snake from that moment on_) and Sasuke would have left the chamber that very moment if-

if the girl's eyes didn't dart around the room and settle on his own for the first time.

...odd, is what it was.

All the... confusing confidentiality he found in them.

There was something more to this, it occurred to him, and so he carefully stayed put, deciding to wait and observe the new situation more closely.

What had baffled him was that the younger prisoner-girl, the one who had been completely unresponsive from fear moments ago, didn't as much as _flinch_ at the sight of red eyes glowering in the shadows, which was the usual reaction of ninjas and civilians alike. _Demon-__eyes_, he had even heard them called. This could only mean... that this girl, this mere civilian, had seen the sharingan before. Which meant she had seen an Uchiha fight before.

Which meant that maybe she was worth some of his attention.

The moment of excitement was short though. When the girl declared that she was a soothsayer, Sasuke's attention was promptly washed away and, finally, he decided that could not take any more stupidities.

"Leaving to train already, Sasuke-kun?" Orochimaru addressed him, the moment he started in the direction of the door, sounding amused. Irritated with the interruption, Sasuke gave the man a flat look over his shoulder that he hoped conveyed an expectation for the Sannin to follow the lead. Yet the message, however, was either lost to the snake or Orochimaru was intentionally baiting him, as his grin widened with mirth, "Wouldn't you like to introduce yourself to our new guests?"

Obviously, it was the latter.

Sasuke's hand stopped halfway to the doorknob. He scowled. "I have nothing to say to them." And he didn't have anything to do with any of this, he added in his mind. _They better hope for death_. They would be tortured, or given to the males in the Sound or, more probably, become Kabuto's new guinea pigs. Whatever it was, their fate was sealed and painful.

Yes, it had absolutely _nothing_ to do with him. And yet not a second later, before he could stop himself, he caught himself saying, "If they're lucky, they'll die soon."

...instantaneous silence followed his words.

There were no snide remarks from Kabuto. Not a prompt from Orochimaru. Because what Sasuke had just said, what he just realized he had just said, could almost pass as _considerate._

Death was, after all, the highest known mercy in the Sound.

The only person, however, who didn't pick up on this, had apparently found it gravely insulting. The dark-skinned girl was a quivering mess, but the other, long-haired girl had the audacity not only to lock eyes with him, but also glare daggers.

"Such a pleasurable experience," she smiled through her teeth with a surprisingly firm amount of sarcasm, "like meeting you will never be forgotten, Uchiha-san."

_An idiot, _Sasuke concluded, pushing the door open.

Taking offense at his parting words just proved the girl's ignorance. He meant what he had said: if she was lucky, she would die soon. It was entirely her problem that she was obviously too stupid to understand this and wouldn't realize it until it was already too late.

_*That very first time Uchiha Sasuke saw the self-proclaimed soothsayer, he thought he hadn't seen such a pitiful fool in a long time.*_

* * *

His muscles strained and tightened until every single nerve burned along them. Just once more and he would finish up._ Just once more. _Sweat dripped from his bangs into his eyes from trying _(and failing_, he grinds his teeth at his weakness, and goes back to his training with unnecessary vigor) to perform the technique up to the just right amount of chakra applied, just the precise control and aim.

It had to be perfect. It had to. He couldn't beat _him _with anything less.

Chidori Current, which he was supposed to be working on, was a good additional technique, Sasuke agreed, but he had been over it more times than he could remember. Mastering it came astoundingly easy even without the sharingan, but Orochimaru had continued to insist upon endless practice sessions for weeks on end. The Sannin pitted him against dozens of Sound nin on a regular basis, as if trying to see just how many piles of weak, numerous scavengers he could fight off before he got bored.

Some days he didn't know why he kept it up; the same mindless routine, day after day after day. What was the point of being a prodigy if nothing put before him truly challenged him anymore? Sometimes he felt that his superior skills were being insulted by such mediocre tests as fighting mercenaries, the worst trash of shinobi, and all those who flocked to Sound simply for power for the sake of power. Compared to those, Sasuke almost wished for the days of sparring with that condescending bastard Kabuto again.

He shook the thought from his head.

_Almost._

He was frustrated, not desperate.

Motivated with a thought of ultimate achievement, the Uchiha had spent hours in additional training by himself, trying to invent his own technique. The task, however, was proving more difficult than the young ninja had assumed it would be. The concept was _there,_ but developing it any further was as much of a problem as in the very beginning. Sasuke couldn't understand how Orochimaru could do this in his spare time for_ fun-_ but before he could come into the danger of feeling any sort of grudging respect for the snake, he quickly decided to call it a day.

Unsheathing the katana as soon as he entered some random room (he never slept in the same room twice- a habit he developed since arriving to Sound, for precaution), Sasuke neatly aligned his shoes and sat on the bed for a few passive moments. Rare as these episodes of exhaustion were, they always left him feeling unsatisfied with himself, thinking darkly and profusely about his progress. But there was no reason for him to feel this _tired_ today- if that's what the dull pressure in the back of his skull was. The teenager refused to go see Kabuto for something as trivial as a little ache, so he lay down, hands folded and pressed to his forehead. Maybe he just needed to sleep. Or maybe he just needed some change, something new.

He turned to lay on his side, staring blankly at the inky darkness.

Maybe he was just bored...

* * *

_*The second time Uchiha Sasuke saw the long-haired girl, she almost didn't see him at all.*_

It had been a specifically good morning for a walk outside and the Uchiha-prodigy had no intention of staying put in the stuffy base, no matter how 'unadvised' (as Kabuto had put it) it was to leave without Orochimaru's knowing. The sun was tepid, the air cool, and Sasuke had come across a wide field, sheltered by the thickest part of the forest that was perfect for taijutsu, just the day before.

Unfortunately, Orochimaru had a tendency to avoid taijutsu practices for whatever reason (he suspected that the man simply found them dull) and, keeping this in mind, Sasuke was just on his way to the snake's private chamber to drag him out if the need arose. Then, strangely enough, he met someone half-way.

It took him mere moments to recognize her: the same prisoner-girl from a few days ago. She appeared to be dressed differently now, in an old gray rag he had seen on deceased test-subjects piled up nicely before they were burnt. But it must have been her- there were not any females in the base beside a few kunoichi he had the misfortune of meeting.

The girl was staggering down the hallway, as though drunk. As she came closer and the lighting changed on her figure, he could see that she was holding her hand in front of her. Pretty stupidly, he thought, seeing that it was bleeding all over the place. She was so preoccupied with it that she didn't seem to notice him at all. Hence the boy made his steps slower, more pronounced, as a sign of warning, because she was obviously walking straight into him (and why would _he_ be the one to step to the side?).

But the civilian didn't budge; she just kept coming closer and closer until Sasuke, a frown making its way on his face, actually had to sidestep _her!_ It was just in time, too- ignorant as ever, the girl had come about ten inches from him and would have crashed headlong into his chest if he hadn't done so. Unamused, Sasuke pointed a meaningful glare at her.

Her eyes were glassy and unfocused at first... yet as they slowly took in his features, he saw her gaze clear and _sharpen._ When the girl turned around to face him fully, Uchiha Sasuke found himself more than a little confused at the amount of something most alike 'familiarity' he saw seeping into her gaze.

_There._

There it was again- the hunch that she knew him from somewhere or, at least, that she knew more about him than he would've liked her to know. It was a look that better suited a Konoha ninja than a nameless, cowardly prisoner who he had nothing to do with. Finding this familiarity undeserving, increasingly irritating even, Sasuke stopped for a moment to give her an accordingly scrutinizing look back.

Viewed up close, it took him some time to acknowledge that the girl was older than he had previously thought- she appeared to be around his age, seventeen at most- but her gaunt frame was very misleading. Her mouth was thin, with a sarcastic sneer lingering about the corners. Pensive swamp-green eyes, he noted, as she held his look long enough for most people to consider as 'staring'. All of it served to confirm his first observation- the boy was sure he had never met this person in his life.

What surprised him the most, though, was that this apparently insolent civilian was still _alive._ 'Insolent' didn't do well in the Sound- not unless they were an Uchiha prodigy or, else, strapped to Kabuto's table and allowed to scream.

But here she was: not unharmed (he glanced at her bloodstained hand, that was... glittering with glass?) but definitely alive. It had been a few days since Orochimaru began the charade: by default, she should have been dead by now. Or transported to an experimentation facility at least. Definitely not _here_.

Deciding not to dwell on it and hurry to make sure Orochimaru hadn't slipped out of the base yet, Sasuke continued on, at the same time when Kabuto rounded the corner, as was his usual habit of showing up wherever and whenever he wasn't welcome. Having long ago developed selective deafness for anything that came out of the medic's lying mouth, the Uchiha only walked pass him (slinging him back a look of disdain, out of courtesy).

Normally he wouldn't have given the guy a second thought: Kabuto's lapdog mannerisms, paradoxically mixed with obscure pride, always both sickened and unsettled him in a strange sort of a way, until he finally learned to pay no attention to it. Yet today Kabuto's face acquired a touch more smug expression than usual as he passed him by.

It was... _knowing__,_somehow. This had the boy's mind brimming with suspicion in an instant. What was he up to? If Sasuke cared to analyze the situation more indulgently, he would have thought that Kabuto looked to be in particularly high spirits today for whatever reason.

_Doesn't ma__tter. _All these wandering thoughts were a sure sign that he needed to focus more on his training. With this in mind Sasuke eliminated any other curiosities, ignoring the way bright-red droplets of blood on the floor followed him all the way up to the madman's chambers. Then he went in.

_*That second time Uchiha Sasuke saw the seemingly-important girl, he thought that there may be something more to her than meets the eye. If not, why else would she...?*_

* * *

"She's still here."

"Who ever are you talking about, Sasuke-kun?"

"_Her. _The girl."

"Hm? You mean Akane-chan? Do not concern yourself with her."

Sasuke couldn't help but have his neutral stare intensify into a glare. 'Concern' was a stupid word to use. The whole situation was setting him on edge.

"She's _useless_," he felt the need to point out and so he did, flatly. Orochimaru only passed him by, with a rare air of dismissal around him. Usually the man at least tried to get him into a one-sided conversation about leveling-up his training or improving his ninjutsu, but now...

"Perhaps," Orochimaru said ambiguously, flashing him a glance from the corner of his golden eyes, "Perhaps not_._" Arms folded, the man paused for a moment long enough to give him a small cryptic smile, "Come now, Sasuke-kun, I cannot believe the presence of a mere civilian-girl would _upset_ you this much."

_Mocking him like that..._

"You know it doesn't," Sasuke retorted, still with the same blankness dulling his words and expression.

"Then there's nothing to talk about, is there?"

There was a definite end to the conversation. Pushing the topic further would only be fruitless, Sasuke knew, and so he dropped the questions lest the Sannin started to pester him about his motives. Because there weren't any.

It wasn't actually important. It wasn't as if it mattered.

Later, during afternoon training, it made him vaguely wonder somewhere in his mind (a single part that _wasn't_ preoccupied with memorizing the last seal for Binding Snake Glare Spell) what had made him question about the girl in the first place. Possibly because it was all too unusual. Because it would irk him to have to run into an imprisoned villager in the hallways on a daily basis. Because she was too simple, too _sane_ a person to be residing inside of Sound walls at all. And Sasuke didn't like it one bit.

It felt like a clash of two completely different worlds.

* * *

_*The third time Uchiha Sasuke saw the long-haired girl, they stood staring at one another but not really seeing each other at all.*_

For a moment Sasuke thought that Orochimaru did go with his initial plan and had killed the prisoners, because the female in front of him couldn't possibly be considered alive. Her eyes flickered lightly, reminding him of eerie guttering candles decorating the hallways. Underneath them dark shadows had set in, making her entire expression seem bleak, yet somehow capable of cunning. Her figure, dressed in a rich, formal kimono now for whatever fetish of Orochimaru's, clashed against the tattered interior of the kitchen, with its peeling wallpaper and bare floorboards. Without being able to feel her chakra, it was like he had entered a morgue with a single corpse.

Had this girl only been in the Sound for a month?

The Uchiha-heir didn't let her presence bother him in any way though. After the morning training, which left him drenched to the bone and up to knees in mud, he had taken a warm shower and strong hunger was already twisting his stomach into knots. Without hesitation he sat himself at the table, hopefully making it very clear to the prisoner (if that was what she still was) that he was fully ready to wait until she left.

_...another thing, Sasuke-kun: if you happen to come across Akane-chan, you may as well tell her that we're leaving._

_Why would I have anything to do with her?_

_Let's just say that if you do, you might see something interesting..._

Looking at the girl now, Sasuke couldn't help but question what Orochimaru had meant by the statement. The Sannin had said it in a by-the-way manner during the training, right after informing him of his and Kabuto's departure to another base in the neighboring country for the next few days. The two's private 'field-trips' had never meant a thing to Sasuke; now though, the idea of spending however few days, alone, with an imprisoned civilian-girl roaming through the base, didn't sound very appealing to him. If she was as stupid as he remembered she was, she might even seek comfort_,_ or pity, or help from him.

But this was apparently not so.

His companion did not engage in any such activity. She just continued to chop the vegetables with a knife much too big for her skeletal hand, with a quiet interest, as if waiting for someone who was not there to start a conversation. Neither of them spoke for what could have easily been anywhere between three and thirty minutes. This, finally, relaxed Sasuke.

Even though it had nothing to do with him, the Uchiha had decided long ago that he would not be heartless, no matter how they expected him to act in the Sound. Seeing that this girl was hardly_ his_ prisoner and could not be considered valuable by any standards, he felt no need to withhold the information.

"They left," he said then, successfully sounding neutral, but feeling awkwardly out of place for deciding on speaking to her at all.

So it might have given her a chance of escaping and she could get out of there, Sasuke thought, but it wouldn't be like he was doing her a favour- rather, if she left, she would be doing _him _one. He would get his solitude back and it could all go back to norm-

The girl refused.

Blatantly.

No second thoughts involved.

She would stay, she declared, because she would never leave without that dark-skinned girl. "Because of love," she explained to him, in a soft, slightly patronizing voice.

Because of _friendship_.

Sasuke shouldn't have been surprised by a reply so simple and resolute; yet there he was, caught completely and totally off guard. That tune was so familiar, repeated through his life to no end like it was the most _natural_ thing in the world, and his eyes twitched from the effort not to roll themselves in frustration at some people's blindness.

_**I. **__am here on a mission.__** I. **__am an avenger_, he thought about enlightening her by the means of shaking her by her shoulders,_ And __**this? **__This is your excuse?_

It was simply incomprehensible.

The only thing that was holding her back from being free, from being alive again, were these suspicious bonds of friendship and love, none of which gave anything in return- but to which she would give all of her being? Because of a single person (who probably wasn't even worth it by the looks of her) she would throw away all of her dreams, ambitions, sanity, pride? Her entire life?

She had a chance laid bare before her! Worst more, she was _aware_ of it. And she still chose not to do it?

It was nothing but nonsense, Sasuke concluded and felt a sense of superiority in this knowledge. She was too weak to overcome the obstacles before her. That's what 'friendship' was for. To make her feel strong and _important_. To make her feel like she had a purpose. But only fools felt strong in their weakness and this girl was nothing short of one and she would _never_ achieve anything because she lacked hatred.

Sasuke stopped there, letting the trail of thoughts evaporate on its own.

It was the only way it made sense in his mind. It was only logical.

The Uchiha heir knew that he should've ignored whatever defensive insult the girl thought up as a reply... but when she called him out on being a hypocrite, for some reason, his mind took it with less indifference that he expected it would.

The line was crossed, however, when she looked up at him with this damnable _pity _in her eyes and out of the blue started talking about his family, Itachi, his revenge: as if she _knew_ him, as if she dared think that she could actually understand any of it!

In an instant, flashes of _that day_ exploded in his mind.

He wanted to kill where she stood for it.

He was going to...!

. . .

_No._

_No, this is a test._

It was only that thought that erased the already blazing sharingan from his eyes.

It was a set-up, Sasuke had suddenly realized and cursed Orochimaru for almost managing to make him yield to the corrupt principles of the Sound. And not only was it a test, but it was a test for them both: all of this, the guard's absence, Orochimaru's nonchalant comment, it was nothing but a scenario to see if the girl would step over her principles and leave the base, worrying selfishly for her own safety; and also to see if Sasuke, provoked by a lesser person such as her, would step over his own. The Sannin had done that before with meticulous scenarios, always trying to test his 'resolve' as he put it but Sasuke translated with 'sanity'.

Just as abruptly as he had tensed, Sasuke relaxed in his seat. He briefly pictured the seal on the back of his neck fading away. Discretely, he touched his side where the thick obi had cut itself into his ribs.

There was a sense of pride in him to know that he kept his control. Seeing that the girl didn't go against her word also (though was probably unaware of Orochimaru's provocation due to obvious lack of intelligence) maybe it should have been of comfort to him that at least he wasn't sharing the kitchen with a coward, however much of a fool the girl was.

"_Because everything you do, you have started out of love," s_he had said, with an air of arrogance he didn't expect nor want from a person in her position, with a smart undertone he disliked immensely.

But it was also said with brutal honesty, an almost motherly scorn, like a reminder, with a... strange sort of compassion. And if there was one thing Uchiha Sasuke couldn't deny, to himself nor the world, but was sure as hell not admitting to her, it was that he truly di- _had_ loved his family.

_Yes, she may be a fool, _his mind put in_, but __**that**__ doesn't necessarily make her always wrong, does it?_

"Would you..." when the village-girl broke the heavy silence that had fallen between them, her voice was gentle, somehow apologetic, "like me to make you some lunch, Uchiha-san?"

… _this time._

Only this time... Sasuke would let it slide.

_*That third time he saw the strange, resolute girl, Uchiha Sasuke felt tense, guarded and angry... yet he had __**felt,**__ and it felt strangely familiar, and so allowed himself to share a lunch with another, however stupidly hopeless person.*_

* * *

In the days that followed and weeks those days became, the boy found himself visiting the kitchen slightly more than usual. Needless to say this was simply out of necessity (as he oddly seemed to be getting hungrier by the day) and the ever-pressing boredom that had recently plagued him.

Besides... Sasuke couldn't remember when was the last time someone cooked for him.

Her rice was always gummy and pasty and terribly disappointing and, frankly, he could've easily made a better lunch when he was ten years old. Sasuke considered telling the girl so, but quickly decided against it. Often she was too absorbed with herself, stepping to and fro restlessly from one cupboard to another, her long braid moving hypnotically from one side to the other across her back. A sliver of a memory pricked him for a moment (_-mother braiding her long silky hair on hatsumode* with red ribbons and white pearls-_) but Sasuke gave it a very firm mental glare and then even more firmly ignored it. He quietly ate the dish without complaining even once, watching the curve of the girl's spine and shadows shifting across her long, somehow _womanly_ neck.

… he was just tired, warm and sated. He wasn't thinking clearly. This would pass soon.

If he was to be completely honest with himself, Sasuke could really appreciate the fact that the girl didn't talk much. When she did however, and this fact baffled him the most, she seemed to _enjoy_ talking to him, for reasons unknown. Obviously the girl wasn't attracted to him; in fact, she did not seem to have a very high opinion of him at all.

This suited him just fine.

Their conversations were like a leisurely game of catch: perfectly harmless and predictable conversations for the sake of conversing and a new hobby the usually strict boy allowed himself to carefully partake. He might have thought her tolerable, but that didn't mean he liked her- liking people complicated a person's life, and Sasuke needed his as uncomplicated as it could get until the time came to cut off all the transparent strings he still felt tugging at him every now and then. But, for now, there was something so peaceful in the kitchen atmosphere, something that made him think of better times, that Sasuke did not yet feel the need to rid himself of it.

On some days, when he found himself more tired (_bored,_ who was he kidding) than usual, he watched the girl more attentively in the kitchen, although he took great care so that she didn't notice him there. A few times she seemed to be talking angrily to the air and completely unaware of it. Her words were nothing but mumbles, so the boy could never make any sense of it in any case. On other occasions he thought he could hear these incomprehensible songs she absentmindedly whispered in the hallways, lingering like specks of dust in the air. He never asked her about them though, as neither did he about where did she come from or what was her exact connection to other girl, or anything that might have been classified as 'personal'. He made his own assumptions, observations, etcetera, because Uchiha Sasuke did not pry. For some reason, he considered it too rude- to be reminding her of any past she might have once had.

Most of the time, however, the only thing the girl ever seemed to be doing was blinking and standing, her fingers often clicking in repetitive patterns on the counter, and thinking about some things Sasuke would never know. No, he didn't _need_ to know either. It was her own world, something that existed only in her head and nothing she would see ever again. Not here. It was annoying (_unfair_), the boy thought grimly, the way she allowed herself to dwell in that imaginary world of hers.

It was like they were both in this void, a void that sucked away any voice or sound, thought or emotion, every memory of a previous life. It wasn't anything new. Sasuke had noticed it with whoever he happened to come across in the Sound: the empty nothingness in which nothing could be said or felt, because this place was like that, and they were all people like that, and-

And the girl turned to him with a small, rueful smile. "May I ask you something Uchiha-san?" her voice leveled on a whisper, as if not to disturb him.

Silence. He waited.

"What..." she looked at the ceiling, wistfully, "is the weather like outside?"

With which the void sucked in itself and vanished into the heavy, ash-filled air.

* * *

"You know what I think?"

_Should I care what you think? _The boy objected inwardly, but made no remark lest she should want to start a pointless argument he had no wish to indulge her with. She did seem like a snippy kind of a person...

"What _I_ think," the girl continued in spite of his silence (and with a haughtier voice maybe exactly because of it, he suspected), "is that these underground bases are utterly ridiculous." Her swampy eyes looked around the room with distaste, "Horribly designed, too."

_You are wasting your breath. Make a better use of it._ Sasuke continued to chew on the raw pastry, making no other comment but a dismissive grunt which she seemed to be so easily amused with, for whatever girlish reason. The whole meal was overcooked again, but at least the tomato sauce was pleasant enough to make up for it. A combination of meatballs, tomato-sauce and noodles? What _was_ she thinking, using salt instead of soy sauce? Whatever it was supposed to represent, Sasuke mused, at least it wasn't worse than her other cooking...

"You know you really should take a shower_ before_ coming to eat," the girl offered a piece of advice every so often, firmly, but otherwise uninterestedly, "Sitting there with that dirt in your hair and disheveled robes..."

Sasuke closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. "I don't need you to tell me these things. It's none of your business."

Paying him a quick glance over her shoulder, the girl stopped as if to think about it for a moment. "You're right," she said simply, taking her attention off of him, "It really isn't."

She threw a wrinkled tomato into the trashcan; then she swiftly collected the noodle-crumbles with one hand into the other, which was bent to resemble small plate, and as she was done she returned to stirring with a long wooden spoon across the bottom of the first, then the second, then the third small pot. And yet...

There was something so soullessly practical in her motions that the boy felt mildly disappointed. She was too... neat. Systematical. Orderly. Everything about her, everything she did- it was surgical in its precision. In the end there really was nothing warm or familiar inside of her at all. While he felt a certain sense of respect to the way she carried herself, Sasuke didn't like it, not one bit. But he had gotten used to her presence- which he knew was too dangerous a thing to do. Truly capable ninja got used to nothing.

"Don't forget the cheese."

The click of the bowl on the table in front of him startled him out of his analysis; it was like waking up.

"A simple 'thank you' wouldn't kill you once in a while..." he heard the girl grumble half-heartedly before she made her way to the counter again. Sasuke stared at the white grated pieces for awhile in wonder at their use: it was just another puzzling detail that made it hard to pull out of the reverie_.__** Focus.**__ Focus on the objectives. Training, relax, eat, training, relax, eat, training, sleep if you must. Stop wasting your time here._

But reality had failed to offer him anything challenging enough to pay attention to these past few weeks and, as a result, his mind seemed to have taken to grasping onto any random shred of thought. These brief pauses put him in an unusually relaxed mood- but the boy was so rigorously opposed to the whole concept of 'feeling good' when there was still so much left for him to do that he was torn between hating and anticipating them. Looking forward? No. His training concerned him first, especially since the recent lack of any decent sessions.

Orochimaru couldn't be running out of techniques to teach him; after all, the obsessive man had dedicated his life to studying jutsu. It was possible, however, that he was running out of _energy_ to do so. It wasn't the same as two years ago, when Sasuke had had bruises and his knees buckled from sheer exhaustion from the training the overachieving Sannin put him through. And now, those two years were at their end. This was...

_A quiet before a storm, _Sasuke smirked to himself, only to quickly straighten his expression into a blank one when the girl looked questioningly at him.

A pesky thought was pecking away in his mind: what would happen to _her _when _that_ happened? The boy hadn't given the prisoner much thought before, considering her nothing but some strange, fleeting caprice of Orochimaru's. Did she have any idea what had she gotten herself into? What was going to happen sooner or later?

Most importantly, would she somehow meddle in his plans?

All that talk about her being a seer or something along those lines... it couldn't actually be true? The Uchiha had almost forgotten her story- he had never believed in superstition and he could have cared less about Orochimaru's personal projects. But surely there would have been some revolutionary change if this girl could actually see the future?

One thing was certain: if there was the slightest possibility that she could turn out to be a problem, Sasuke knew he had to be prepared to deal with it.

* * *

"He doesn't believe her."

"No."

"You don't either."

"Not in the least."

He strengthened his hold on the frame of the door. "Then _why_ are we still dragging her along with us?"

Kabuto didn't answer at first. He stood in the infirmary, flushing a scalpel under a gush of hot water and silently thinking, as if Sasuke had just asked him something terribly serious and actually worth contemplating.

"I suppose," the medic tentatively began, having finished with the last glistening piece of his instruments, "there is still some use for her."

Sasuke remained silent, his expression mirroring his dubious thoughts. Kabuto turned to face him politely, wiping his hands with a small towel; it was drenched red with blood. "Would that be all? Sasuke-kun?" There was some splattered in the corner of his glasses too.

"You said that as if she was ever useful," Sasuke noticed spitefully, still undecided with his thoughts on the prisoner.

Kabuto's face stayed expressionless for a couple of moments, as if he had nothing to say to the comment. Then, out of the blue, a small, puzzling smile appeared on his lips, "Oh but she indeed was- much to my surprise, I must admit." He stopped for a moment before asking, "Hasn't Orochimaru-sama told you?"

He threw the blood-soaked towel into the trashcan as he continued, "If it wasn't for the girl, we would have never gotten the word about the Akatsuki and manage to steal thos- "

"-what about the Akatsuki?"

It was all it took to immediately grasp Sasuke's attention. There had not been the slightest mention of Akatsuki's actions for the whole two years he'd spent in the Sound. And then all of a sudden... What did that girl have to do with it...?

"What does she know about them?"

Kabuto just looked at Sasuke for some time, his eyes smiling in that irritating 'you poor ignorant twit' way he was fond of treating him with. He had begun to carefully measure herbs out of the sterile square of white paper and into the pestle, wasting no time in grinding it into a fine powder. A bitter smell soon filled the room.

The medic concentrated on the task as he spoke, never once looking up, "It was amazing, really. It seems she knows everything we know of the organization... and _m__ore_. Both Orochimaru-sama and I agree that the sheer information she has on the members can compare to our complete archives collected over many years." There he stopped, as if pondering idly to himself, "Not to mention that her ability to predict their precise _movements_ is very-"

Sasuke had already left.

* * *

_*The antepenultimate time Uchiha Sasuke saw the long-haired girl, he was looking at her and yet seeing someone else entirely.*_

Abruptly, reacting on raw instinct, Sasuke shoved the small girl against the wall and in the next moment she was hitting hard against it, much harder than he intended her to; her head cracked against the stone; her teeth chattered at the impact. The Uchiha felt no pity, however, instantly gripping her neck with one hand and pushing her shoulder roughly with the other. He almost jerked back from surprise upon doing it- under his palm, the girl was nothing but skin and bones. But this mattered nothing to the avenger, mindless in a fury he hadn't felt in a long time.

She knew.

All this time. She. Knew.

His goal, his very reason for being in this place, but said _nothing_! She knew how much any information on _that person_ meant to him, yet intentionally withheld it, choosing to play ignorant instead! He could easily imagine her laughing at him behind his back!

The girl had squeezed her eyes shut in surprise and it took her a few silent moments to open them and manage a look at him. It was an unreadable one: not frightened, not surprised and, most importantly, not regretful. Nothing but an unbelievably cold stare.

Her mouth set in something most a sneer. "Good day to you too, Uchiha-san."

He felt like wrenching the bloody air right out of her.

Sasuke intensified his grip on her neck, precisely enough as not to cut off her breathing completely. She better take him seriously or... "You know about Itachi. Where is he? What are his current actions?"

The prisoner-girl only stared straight ahead of her as if at some imaginary dot on his neck, not even paying any attention to him. "_Answer me_," he urged her, his hand slipping further and firmer up her throat. Only when her face turned a shade of purple did he remove his hand, for the sake of information, prompted further when her nails dug pleadingly into his knuckles. With heavy-heart he let her go, wanting nothing more than to leave her hanging by her neck from the wall.

The girl looked at him with wide eyes for a long moment, thoughts clearly turning over in her head, like she was only beginning to understand the severity of her position. She looked up at the ceiling in resignation, then back at him.

_The threat must have made her see reason._

Then, as if she had just gotten an idea, she chirped cheerfully like she was bringing him a piece of great news. "He has just taken a breath."

...he went cold in his spot.

"And another one," the girl continued to chant laughably, an odd smile taking over her features, "and another one and another one and anoth-"

His hand instinctively shot to his sword and the blade grazed at her throat. His vision sharpened with the sharingan, and in a second he was seeing her in a slope of tremors and colours, his irises expanding, the tomoes making his head spin. But it was not _what _she said that had him entirely that made his blood boil- it was the _way _she did.

More than anything else, Sasuke hated being talked to as if he were a child.

Like he was just being _silly_ about some equally_ ridiculous_ matter.

And the sickening way she acted, he could not believe it, the sniveling wretch she had been when he had first seen her! When did she acquire that tone in her voice? That... cold indifference, that bite of cruelty.

"Will you kill me Uchiha-san?" uttered in a low, insipid whisper.

Sasuke hated her and everything she represented in that moment. Even if he could not exactly define the cause to himself, he knew that he absolutely loathed her. Her soul had leaked somewhere and filled up with something else- something false. Maybe it had always been that way: she was a nobody, just like he had first thought, and Sasuke felt stupid for ever for a moment thinking anything else of her.

But the bitch was keen on pushing further, as if eager to shove as many things as possible into his face. Naruto. Sakura. He could hardly see in front of her how dark his mind turned. No one dared say those names in Sound. _No one._ Not even Orochimaru had ever went that far in his provocations. The fact that this- this _nobody _could so easily slip them off of her tongue made furious humiliation overcome him at the thought!

A crimson-red trail of blood appeared under the blade and trickled down her neck, but the exasperating girl didn't even notice it in her tirade. And she was pushing...

"You are such a _child_,"

and pushing...

"hiding behind those hollow eyes of yours!"

"And what are you then?" he was saying suddenly, his temper having reached its boiling point. Not a second later he wanted to swallow his own childish words, yet...

The girl's face haulted in such a grimace that he had to check if he had cut her throat by an unconscious motion of his hand. That wasn't the case, fortunately or not, so he hovered the blade a few centimeters away, as to not give into temptation too soon. She had gone completely sclerotic under his palm- Sasuke felt her shoulder go wooden, hair bristle on her arms. Her sudden state of shock left him enough time to find his grounding again and now the Uchiha watched her, face as blank as ever, and taking a strange sort of enjoyment in her pitiful state, even if he could not understand the cause of it.

He didn't even remember what he had said to her moments ago that made her this way- he could have very well cursed out at her in his anger.

"What is it?" he demanded. But the girl only continued to stare ahead, _through_ him almost, with pain-stricken eyes, mute and deaf to anything happening around her. She was probably feeling ill, Sasuke thought, but he was not about to release her until she-

"I..." a weak splutter came from her throat first, unrelated to his now mild grip on it.

"I don't know." Her face suddenly hardened, "I don't know and that's terrifying me more than your sword's blade, Kabuto's taunting, or Orochimaru's trickery ever could. Because Akane is here, Uchiha-san, but _I _am nowhere to be found anymore." She dropped her look to the floor.

...was she mocking him again? What the hell was she talking about? Did he hear Orochimaru wrong that Akane was her name...? The avenger didn't know what to make of her raving.

Had Kabuto not show up at that exact moment, Sasuke didn't know what would have happened; what _he_ would have done. He was not about to lose control, oh no, on the contrary- he would have at very least, with a very precise, very admirable control, struck his katana through her shoulder and twisted it until she told him everything he needed to know. Even if he killed her, he knew, Orochimaru would make an angry face and lash a few words, but do essentially nothing about it.

He_ needed_ that information. Next time, Sasuke swore to himself, there was no way she wouldn't get off that easily.

For now, though, he couldn't stand the sight of her.

_*That antepenultimate time Uchiha Sasuke saw the sly, disgusting girl, he regretted not having ripped out her throat the moment he had first seen her.*_

* * *

For weeks the Uchiha made the outdoors his abode. He saw no reason to keep coming back to the Sound headquarters (and this he kept reminding himself every day) when he could train all day long and camp in a cave on the inside of the waterfall** for necessary sleep and nutrition just as well.

And train he did, for every hour, every minute of his time. The recent happenings only pushed the teen forward into a neverending cycle of practice and stepping over the limits as far as possible. It was a necessity. It was the only thing that drove him. He couldn't let himself forget that, not even for a moment. And, finally...

He did it.

_Finally_ he perfected it: one of the most difficult techniques he had ever learned, the greatest challenge of his year of day-to-day training- the technique powerful enough to smite_ that person. _The fact that it was he himself who had invented it made Sasuke feel something entirely different than the usual fleeting sense of accomplishment: it made him feel euphoric, like he had already killed a part of Itachi's power with his... yet also strangely calm, like a martyr carrying on his duty, at the same time.

"Kirin... you call it?" Orochimaru asked, raising one eyebrow interestedly. The Sannin had been so quiet and stone-faced throughout the whole display that for a moment Sasuke was worried that the man had realized, much too early, just how far Sasuke had surpassed him. It was a dangerous possibility.

Fortunately though, Orochimaru stayed as patronizing as ever, because soon his face acquired its usual grin and he laughed quietly, the look of dark appraisal never leaving his eyes. "Do you intend to punish the wicked, Sasuke-kun?"***

The Uchiha ignored him, pulling his sword from the ground with a jerk. His left hand quivered, making him clench it into a fist. Even if the technique itself used little chakra, the training left him completely drained... He constantly had to remind himself not to overdo it. No matter how much time there was left until _then_, it was imperative to always have at least some chakra just in case, _especially _around this man. Even if weakened in body, Orochimaru's sly, unpredictable mind was a dangerous adversary in itself.

In the end Sasuke turned to his contemptible teacher, sharingan eyes meeting the hungry serpentine glow evenly.

Two years had passed.

At last, he was his match.

"Yes."

* * *

_*The penultimate time Uchiha Sasuke saw the long-haired girl, she was looking at him, yet was seeing someone entirely different*_

He had never been especially comfortable with girls crying and seeing_ this_ particular one break right in front of him was equally annoying.

It would have been a lie to say that he didn't take a strange sort of enjoyment in it though. It was coming to her after all, Sasuke thought coldly, she was getting what she deserved. So the Uchiha said nothing, standing and staring at her in unabashed irritation. The girl's usually confident posture, face, aura had changed so drastically- he had never seen her like that before, sobbing and wheezing and tears brimming, looking as if her whole life had ended.

Maybe she finally got to the point where it really did.

But no, he would not allow himself be coerced into showing pity he didn't feel.

This was nothing but the ultimate proof of her weakness.

"I don't care what happened," he told her this outright, hoping to get ahead of her and shut her up, "It would be better if you didn't come here to wail about it." His seething emotions hadn't settled down, in spite of weeks of the most brutal training he could put himself through. The dislike he had for the girl, bordering on hate, was etched deeply into him by now. _Orochimaru better come soon or..._

The girl unconsciously pressed her palms to her mouth; it seemed the gesture soothed her a little.

"Your... empathy is moving," her voice, when she could finally bring herself to speak, was low and unsteady, "However, I didn't come here to get your help... quite the contrary..."

She brought her eyes up and Sasuke almost flinched- in them lay brilliant excitement, and thoughts, and intelligence, but at the same time a spark of madness shone through. "I'm here to offer you mine."

That gesticulation, that way of speech- it all reminded him of a certain someone, or of a certain two _someones,_ and seeing it come from the body of a person like her made him feel disgusted.

"How about we make a deal, Uchiha-san?"

The way she _looked_ at him. Like she was always considering something. Like she had him all _figured out._

Yet against all the dislike welling up at him, she knew just what to offer to make him listen to her. In a direct way, obviously feeling in control. It was like everything she did or said, Sasuke thought, this girl did out of some unconscious urge to leave an impression.

But after hearing her out, no matter how much he wanted to distance himself from her, the Uchiha heir couldn't help but be intrigued by the world of opportunities opened to him.

Her deal was quite simple: freeing the brown-skinned girl Hana (under the premise he even came across her) for the invaluable information about his plan to assassinate Orochimaru. The Uchiha was confident that he could do it- but the consequences if he failed would be catastrophic, hence any possibility, however small, was better eliminated.

Grudgingly, he agreed to this.

True Uchihas never broke their promises and the girl knew that, it seemed, as she didn't hesitate to continue, secure with his one word. Her faith in him pleased him, in a way, even if it was irrevocably naive._ Never trust anyone. __Be on your guard. Observe closely._

"_Unless one power absorbs another, it will not become great_," was all he could get out of her for the price she named. The ninja briefly wondered if it had anything to do with the ritual, but was forced to analyze it later, because the soothsayer didn't waste any time in listing her next outrageous demands.

And if she thought that he was going to babysit some girl then-

_Itachi, _she quickly said and from that moment on, everything changed.

Because for that single name, Sasuke was able and willing to do anything. Yes, Sasuke knew he would kill him, out of the simple reason that defeat was not a possibility. Yet still, hearing someone else confirm it with such finality, with confidence that rivaled his own, felt absolutely _exhilarating._

"Uchiha Itachi..." she said and looked at him with her green, green eyes, "is going to die by your hand."

_Uchiha Itachi is going to die by your hand..._

_Uchiha Itachi_

_**DIE**_

_your hand._

The feeling of raw, violent happiness. Bursting in his stomach.

He was going to kill Itachi.

He was going to _slaughter him._

His fingers trembled as he tried to keep his control. It had never been so hard to do as in that moment.

The soothsayer looked enraged at him for whatever reason, but the Uchiha didn't care about her warnings, or accusations, or whatever she was babbling on about.

All he knew was a few minutes of perfect peace of mind.

It was in that moment that Sasuke knew that all he had been through, all he had done, everything he had abandoned, was _worth_ it.

In the end, when Orochimaru finally showed up, with his lapdog in tow and false air of power around him, Sasuke found it hard to keep his face straight. _You will die_, he wanted to say. _I will end you._

_I will end you all._

And later, when he held back Akane before she committed sure suicide by lunging furiously at Orochimaru, Sasuke completely attributed it to his speck of a good mood.

Nothing else, because nothing else mattered.

The sentence to death of his brother sang in his ears.

_*That penultimate time Uchiha Sasuke saw the infuriating, but admirable girl, he remembered her name.*_

* * *

_*The last and ultimate time Uchiha Sasuke saw the girl named Akane, he was seeing her, really seeing her, for the first time.*_

Ultimately, Sasuke had to give up on debating if his self-proclaimed friends were truly that blind or just plain stupid.

No matter how many times he had told him, no matter what he did to him or anybody else, the persistent blonde always came running back. Of course, Naruto had never been especially bright: a dog would have learned his place by now, but not him, of course not. Uzumaki pushed too far, himself, the whole shinobi system, and him. If he had a sliver of common sense, he thought, Naruto would have understood by now that _friendship _was the last thing on his mind.

And if he still refused to acknowledge the reality the next time they met, Sasuke swore the only path left for him would be destruction.

That girl, Akane, was down there with the Konoha team, below his feet. He could see her, eyes fixed in hate on Orochimaru, her knees buckling in contempt.

"Look at that, isn't that an adorable display?" the man beside him commented quietly to himself, chuckling.

Kabuto turned towards him. "Orochimaru-sama?"

"We're leaving, Kabuto," the Sannin said in a decisive voice. "But first..." His pale hands flew up in front of him in a hand-sign, "Get _her._"

But why would he?

In a heartbeat they attacked. The Konoha team was fast to withdraw, recognizing their disadvantage. The soothsayer was swept away by the ANBU captain and Sasuke watched them running for an escape, pursued into the woods.

The Uchiha himself never moved from his spot.

He could recognize Kabuto glancing around in the distance, looking for him, but quickly giving up and continuing after the guy from Root. Orochimaru would be pissed off at his 'treachery' when they came back too, no doubt. Without him helping the two, the Konoha team and the soothsayer had about a five per cent chance of escape.

It was a perfect way of testing her ability.

If Orochimaru and Kabuto actually managed to get her, then all the girl had said about Itachi and him defeating the Snake Sannin would have been a lie, seeing that she had implied during their conversation that they would part ways_._

If she did manage to escape, on the other hand, it would be a valid proof of her claims.

Once again he might have provided her a chance of escape... but it wasn't like he was doing her a favour. Quite the contrary: she was doing him one. With her out of the Sound, Sasuke was eliminating any chances that she could reveal his intentions to Orochimaru, or feed the Sound any more information, or blackmail him, without dirtying his hands with her blood. Even if she went to another village, Konoha would never greet warm-heartedly an accomplice of the Sound. It was a fact he counted on. The whole reasoning behind his lack of action to help catch her was as a means of a test. Nothing more.

If they killed or locked her up, at least it had nothing to do with him. Sasuke wouldn't consider himself responsible.

It was a win-win situation for him in any case: he got and confirmed to himself what he wanted. That 'Hana' girl was most likely already dead, he assumed, so he probably wouldn't have to burden himself with her on his travel. And as for the soothsayer...

_*The last and ultimate time Uchiha Sasuke saw Akane he wondered if they really would meet ever again. Because if they did... if she managed to survive that long... and if she ever showed a mere possibility of turning a problem to him..._

_Uchiha Sasuke would not hesitate to be the one to silence her for good.*_

* * *

**Translation: Amici fures temporum- Friends are a waste of time.**

***Hatsumode- the first shrine visit of the New Year in Japan to pray for comfort and health in the new year. It is very common to see women in kimono and quite a few men too. Red ribbons and white pearls Sasuke's mother wore- red and white- I put as colours of the Uchiha crest.**

****Kirin- a creature from Japanese folklore, known as 'the king of beasts'. It only appears in places ruled by a benevolent and wise leader and is well-known for **_**punishing the wicked**_**, as Orochimaru ironically states.**

*****The cave behind the waterfall- I used the place shown in the Naruto Shippuuden movie "Bonds", where Sasuke is seen in the opening scene.**


	31. Nunc quidem paululum a sole

**Chapter thirty-one:**

**Nunc quidem paululum a sole**

**A/N: So I lied. Took me too long to post this chapter, even though I wrote more than half of it a while back. Be sure to read the announcement at the end of the chapter about a fan-oneshot of TpoL, if you're interested. Enjoy.**

* * *

"_Let me in, if only a little bit, will you? Because I have a feeling..."_

Eyes dry and hypnotized, the patient stared at the people in front of her feeling horribly drained, as if she'd been awake for days yet somehow fast asleep all the while. It was too contradictory a feeling- if someone had asked her to describe it, she would not have been able to put it in words. The only thing that she knew was that she felt ill, more ill than the last time she had found herself in that room, and she wasn't supposed to be feeling that way _**dammit**__._

Questions about her health were, however, the last thing on these people's minds, if the urgent tension in the room was anything to go by. Hence the long-haired girl stood very silent, very still, weighing the pros and cons of pitching a fit so she could be declared mentally unstable and safely locked up in her little white room. At least then she'd go back to the familiar routine of warm, light banter once more...

"_When __those__ two __come_, you said that time."

Gone. The precious chance was wasted on her indecision. Steeling herself, Akane swallowed the rising flood of curses in favour of a simple, forced slur. "What about it?"

Brilliant morning sun spilled into the Hokage's office over stacks of books, shabby maps and yellowed journals littering either sides of the desk. Tsunade sat solemnly in the dawn light, hands clasped before her chin, elbows propped on the desk, and merely observing Akane with hard, unreadable eyes.

"Two people who can pose a great threat to this nation," Tsunade said, fixing her stern eyes on hers, "Akane-san. I have reason to believe that you knew, months ago, that they would come to the Land of Fire. These two are S-ranked criminals from a dangerous organization called the Akatsuki. Am I right?"

The short, heavy silence was a challenge unto itself. Akane didn't reply immediately, trying to organize a mess of unsaid words.

"_I have a feeling that if I don't hold you like this... you'll disappear."_

_Stop. __**Stop.**__** it.**__ Snap __out __of __it. _Why did it... hurt? She couldn't believe she allowed herself to hurt so much over someone like Ko- _He...__is__ nothing__ to __me, __s_he furiously assured herself, _This __is __it. __I've __spent __months__ in __a __nuthouse __exactly __for __this __moment. __Right __now. Get a grip.  
_

"_You'll go away and I'll never see you again..."_

But all she could think about, all she could hear and feel was a handsome, soundless laughter enveloping her whole like a warm, secure blanket.

_"Akane, you are..."_

"Akane-san."

"What?" the girl breathed out hastily. The warm honey-tide of good feeling in her stomach immediately turned to acid. _Just__ when __had __it __gotten __so __hard __to __breathe?_The Hokage exchanged a pointed look with her assistant, carefully attentive from beside her, before she turned back at her again. Something crept into her expression, "Don't you have anything to say to this?"

_Go._

_Go to the pits of hell and burn._

All the fears, accusations and self-accusations, all the terror and pain accumulated yet dulled with apathy, medicine and, finally, affection, exploded inside of her again, stronger than ever. It was hard to imagine that she had ever lapsed into a state of blankness at all. Rage was a powerful motivator and only now was Akane feeling the full weight of its paws, enjoying as they pressed down so comfortingly on her shoulders.

Her mouth was full of angry screams, yet gentle smiles laved over her lips. "Hidan and Kakuzu, is who you mean. Tell me, have they killed the monk yet?"

At long last the older woman shifted, dropping her hands to her desk and straightened, now thumbing the edge of a file beneath her hand. _Her_ file, the soothsayer assumed. Her very first written document. It was official now: Akane existed- filed away, black on white, and ready to be taken seriously.

"I see. So you know. If that's the case then..." Tsunade made a pause there, incredulity and distaste clearly being filtered out of her voice, "Well, it would seem that you were not lying to us after all."

"And I'm quite glad you finally acknowledged my ability," Akane retorted dryly, easily tuning back into her usual biting tone. "I stayed up nights absolutely pining for your approval."

The Godaime Hokage's sharp, hazel eyes narrowed at the sarcasm.

"You do understand that you were in too suspicious a position for me to have blind faith in you, Akane-san. You're not that unreasonable. The incident with Sand remains unclear even now." Her red-painted lips pressed slightly together for a moment, "The only reason I can see for your complete lack of respect is that you hate _me_ personally... but I will not say that you don't have a reason to."

Akane almost laughed out loud at the assumption. "Hate you?" Instead she appraised the woman with an expression of most amiable, patronizing boredom, "Now why would I hate _you_ specifically? Do not worry, Tsunade-san, I don't 'hate' anybody... because I have no expectations of anybody in this world. And trust me, I have long learned not to expect anything courteous from ninja."

"Then you still insist on being uncooperative even now? Your stubbornness is-"

"Oh, I am not stubborn, no." A flicker of a smile. "I merely have my own system of thinking."

"I don't tolerate selfishness, girl, and you're only getting more smack-worthy as the seconds go by," the chair screeched as Tsunade got to her feet, eyes ablaze, prompted into her passionate temper, "A strong comrade has been killed not too far from Konoha and Uzumaki Naruto is next on the hit-list. If you don't want me to take you by your neck _personally _and make you sing, brat, you will tell us everything you know about these criminals before this minute is over."

"Tsunade-sama..." Shizune whispered softly with understanding, but didn't dare continue. It was a vain attempt to calm the angry Sannin, but a commendable one all the same. Cautious and polite as ever, Shizune gave Akane an irritable look of otherwise warm, doe-like eyes.

Their concern for Naruto was so strong, the fake soothsayer thought. She could use it.

_(how can you...?)_

Akane regarded the older women for a long, cold moment, her face etched with polite disdain. When she spoke, her words were chips of ice. "I apologize, but I do not take well to threats."

_Why should I feel pity for people more than they have ever felt pity for me?_

Giving a harsh, reproving sigh, Tsunade raised a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, the gesture implying that she was at her wits end. Pushing her any further would not make her own position more favourable, the soothsayer acknowledged; it was high time to come out in the open, for she didn't know how long she could keep stalling with her well enunciated nonsense.

It was indeed nonsense, because Akane had, of course, long since planned to accept- only, it was going to be under her conditions this time around. The less ground she gave now, the more willing they'd be to take what she did give them - that was what Akane counted on, at least in theory. The dreadful feeling of insecurity was what gave her enough strength to persist.

"Listen, this has turned out to be a terrible bother..." the girl sighed after a moment, careful to sound not only visibly irritated but also appear far too exhausted to continue their argument. It wasn't even an effort to look appropriately resigned- it was indeed how she felt, too. "Just what exactly do you want from me?"

"Information," Shizune said plainly, but this time a touch of warning echoed in her voice. She glanced at her master, who had turned her back on them in favor of the view of the Hokage Monument, following the shadows as they crawled over their stern chiseled faces. "About these Hidan and Kakuzu. We already dispatched twenty scouting teams yesterday, in order not to loose any more time. Anything at all could be of vital importance."

"You sent them away _yesterday?_ And then you decided to consult me?" Akane raised her voice just slightly in feigned surprise. _Damn.__I__ hope __it __isn't __too __late __to__ jump __on __that __train..._ "How clever. What do you think I am, a soothsayer or a miracle-worker? Now you've already sent them to their deaths. Congratulations." _This__ better __work...__If __not..._"So if you'll all excuse me now," she made her way to the door, tone pleasant but with a caustic look that said quite plainly 'go to hell'.

"Stop right there," Tsunade turned, her eyes catching fire from the sunlight, "What do you mean by that? Surely if we send a messenger-bird with the appropriate information to whichever team you tell us is encountering the Akatsuki first-"

"-you will never make it in time," Akane cut her off, twirling around, "What's done is done. Izumo, Kotetsu and Shikamaru will survive only due to aid arriving in the very last moment. Sarutobi Asuma will, however, die in any case." She stopped as if to think about it for a moment, tapping her chin lightly. "Who knows? Maybe he's already dead," she added with a small, indifferent shrug.

"T-This can't be!" Shizune exclaimed, too taken aback with the news to realize that the girl had just named every person on the otherwise confidential platoon correctly, "Asuma-senpai can't possibly-"

"Are you being truthful about this?" Tsunade, on the other hand, had picked up on it and was looking at her with enough edge to her stare to cut her in half. "What do you know is going to happen over there?"

"You should have believed me, Tsunade-san," Akane responded as though she hadn't heard her, breaking out the most uncaring tone in her arsenal. "Now there is no time for you to question me, and write it _all __nicely __down_, or for them to sit and read it in the middle of the battlefield. But I can assure you I'm not lying." She looked briefly at Shizune, expression insulted. "But why don't you just wait and see for yourself? Even this very moment their clock is ticking away. And there is _nothing_..." Akane emphasized lastly, "you can do..."

As the shadow of cruelty darkening her smile.

"...about it."

_Unless you send me._

"Except... if we send _you_ this instant to fill them in personally," Hokage was quick to latch onto their last option, even though her eyes betrayed her suspicions about the whole ordeal, "While I don't know who you're actually loyal to, Akane-san, I don't doubt that you really do have some knowledge of future events. As the situation is, I can only give you this deal: the search party for your sister in exchange for your assistance in preventing these criminals from littering this country with corpses. If that isn't fair-"

"Fair? And what if it's _my_ corpse? Am I to put myself in danger to save the life of some ninja I couldn't care less about, for nothing but _your __word_ that you will aid me afterwards? Spare me of your fatuous promises, Tsunade-san, levity is not a characteristic of mine," Akane turned her head away, deceptively unimpressed. She couldn't allow herself to appear overjoyed about it in order not to raise any more suspicions, even though she could feel a victorious smile fighting to display itself on her face.

_Almost__ there..._

"If you do this, Akane-san, the Kages of the five great shinobi countries will praise you for your... benevolence, gift and courage," the three words were spat out almost, in no way hiding the disgust for using them in such a context, "What's more, that will be of great use to you when requesting those decrees for the conduction of the search for Hana in their regions. Isn't that what you wanted in the first place?"

For the frailest moment Akane actually considered taking the Hokage's offer to help her find Hana, but doubts leapt upon the tender notion, and it was quickly eradicated_._ It was impossible to silence her mind, which kept whispering a mantra of old accusations. Even though her stomach felt heavy, as if filled with lead, whenever her thoughts took a direction to what (_who__)_ she was leaving behind, she knew she had to leave that place. She _had_ to. She didn't see any other way.

_Not anymore. Not from Konoha._

"It may be as you say," the long-haired girl lied, shrugging her shoulders, "but I would as lief go as not." There she stilled for a few moments, as if thinking deeply on it and recalculating her options. In truth, the girl had rehearsed this months ago when she was first locked up in the hospital. Every word, every gesture, it was all coming together perfectly. For once, for the _first__ time_ in her goddamned life here, her plan was working, even if it had taken patience she didn't think she possessed! However...

However, on the inside, the conflict she hadn't anticipated those months was, was tearing her in half. Even the exciting feeling of accomplishment was not enough to dull the unfamiliar ache eating away at her insides. With her next words, she would be leaving Konoha forever. It would start all over again: bargains, lies, surviving, the endless circle of things emotionless and worthless, for a goal she couldn't even see clearly in her mind's eye any more.

Say it.

_(you don't want to be like that)_

Say it.

_(everything you felt, the one you cared for)_

**Say it.**

_(will you really throw it away?)_

"So be it," she agreed, in a cool, careful voice. "If you are indeed intent on keeping your part of the deal, Tsunade-san..." Akane swallowed hard, drowning her own heartbeat from her ears, "maybe I _can_ provide you with a little assistance." She was leaving Konoha.

_(just. like. that.)_

… _she was** leaving** Konoha._

And she. would. _never._ come. back.

* * *

"The Akatsuki team is at the nearest bounty exchange-point."

Soon, she would be able to contact them.

"Affirmative: that coincides with the report we just received from team Asuma."

.._.God_. Soon she would be contacting the most monstrous criminal organization in the world. What was she doing? What happened with her ambitions to stay out of the story's way? Most importantly... why the hell didn't any of this actually_ bother_ her?

"Shizune, contact Gai, he's the only one who can get there in time. Tell him to be by the gate in ten for immediate dispatch.

"Yes, Tsunade-sama!"

Probably because... yes, because it was the right thing to do. Np, it was the only thing to do. It wasn't her fault. If things had been different... It _wasn't_ her fault.

Akane didn't have anything but the conviction that she was right. If she lost that, there would have been nothing left of her- she would be left as a vestige of herself.

"They will be fighting in a clear space, on the road in front of the station. We can only approach it from the back and-"

"Put these on. You will inform Gai-senpai of the situation on your way there. Remember, while you're out there, follow his lead."

"Let me make this very simple for you, Akane-san: you are to stay in his sight at all times. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly."

Through the filthy, dust-clogged window of her mind, the nineteen-year-old girl watched a brand new day awaken in a palette of macabre colours. The whole situation felt like a betrayal. Of what, of who, she didn't know. She was dimly aware of what she was about to do, but all the sense of it eluded her. It was too hard to think about the questionable morality, or about the merits and possible drawbacks of her current actions, or about a labyrinth of feelings that led her time and time again to the room in sector D. In her mind, its walls were already cracked, crumbling and ready to be condemned.

"Shizune, instruct Gai to keep the girl out of the battle's range and assist in combat as soon as the opportunity presents."

This was what was real. Not the dreamlike haze of the past few months. She had to get her feet under her and survive no matter what the cost. With the Akatsuki it was a set of new opportunities, a completely new beginning, a new_ her._

"Understood. Follow me, Akane-san. We must be quick."

It was decided: _s_he would not let anyone get in her way, not anymore. Her new skin would be fresh, hard, thick, even if it chilled her to the bone. That was the moment in which Akane felt like a snake. So that fateful morning of her departure, she looked and remembered all the ninja of Konoha for the last time. Bowed politely. Allowed herself a small, ironic smile.

"Alright then. Move out."

And put on her new skin.

* * *

The sun had already risen high above the bluish mountains, spreading warmth and the lingering, distinct scent of spring. March, with its budding earth and whistling air, was unveiled in front of her so suddenly that the ex-patient was struck at the unfathomable fleetness of time. Had she truly skipped the winter while dwelling in her mind for months? The forest was densely-wooded, making shadows stretch all around like cobwebs, dispersing where a few bright rays of light made a striking breech through the tree-tops.

Mostly though, everything was a blur, running passed her in colours of leaves and light. Akane kept her face pressed deeply into a green stretchy material, inhaling the scent of a cheap floral detergent. The wind hit against her cheeks and found its way through the sleeves of her too-big shirt, making it puff up with cold air. Her spine trembled in a disturbing way, the feeling like mice were creeping all over her body. In the extreme, inhuman speed they were going her new zori kept slipping from her feet, threatening to fall off, so Akane curled her chilly toes as tightly as she could to keep them on.

"Nearest to the Temple of Fire, right?" the man called out to her easily over his shoulder as they jumped onto the next overgrown branch. The flying through the air (because it couldn't be called anything but flying) in between was the least frightening part of tree-jumping, as Akane found out. Whenever they actually landed, her body would jerk forward for a second, then sharply backwards in the next, her gut jolting almost painfully and her brain jostling against the walls of her skull. The civilian-girl had to wait a lot of ten seconds upon each hard impact to be able to speak at all.

"Y-Yes," she muffled out, straining her hold over the man's neck as if clinging for life. From her perspective (and what a bloody perspective!) that was exactly how it was. The breakneck speed was so nauseating she couldn't believe Gai could even see where they were going! At the most intense moments the nineteen-year-old couldn't even pry her eyes open; whenever she made the mistake of glancing anywhere around her, she'd get an uncontrollable urge to scream her lungs out, thus had to bite back a scream of terror and press her nose right back into amazingly firm shoulders. Normally, Akane's conservative nature would have flared at the idea of being carried piggyback by a grown man in a _leotard,_ of all the ridiculous things, but at this altitude, at these speeds, the issue was less than trivial.

Nothing of her discomfort was voiced out loud though, leaving the trip awkwardly silent. Other than thorough debriefing on Team Zombie, which had only taken the first half an hour of the trip, the Jounin had kept completely quiet, not even voicing any kind of bemusement at what he was hearing about immortality, and rituals, and five hearts. The soothsayer had replied to his questions as tersely and precisely as she could manage, instructing him on everything she could recall about the two Akatsuki's fighting-styles.

Gai had kept the same tempo for more than three hours non-stop and the long-haired girl was starting to feel more drowsy than dizzy. Every now and then, when she felt the slightest decrease in the strength of the wind whizzing pass them (indicating that their speed had lessened for the moment) Akane dared separate her head from the man's back in order to sneak a closer look at him.

Having met him face to face in such an alarming situation, Gai looked like a complete stranger to her now. Not only because something about his features strongly reminded her of far-away Asia, unlike other people she had met in this world, but because the faint laugh lines around his eyes were the only traces of the sweet, comical nature she had known him by. He was uncharacteristically silent, and Akane was dimly aware how ridiculous it was to even think in the context of 'characteristic' when she had never actually met the guy in her – well, his – life. But since they had left the village gates (when he had theatrically sworn on the Will of Fire 'burning in his veins' in front of the Hokage that he would carry on his mission dutifully and rescue his comrades and yadda yadda yadda), not a single exclamation about youth or springtime had left his mouth- and it was _not __right, _she thought, it was unfair, unfair that nobody ever seemed to act like _themselves_ around her, like the characters she used to watch and love and root for.

On the contrary: his lips were pulled together into a line of pure concentration; his eyes, framed with short, very dark lashes, remained set straight ahead of them. A warm, pungent odour ran along his dampened hairline while streaks of sweat formed an iridescent sheen of drying salts on his temples and jugular.

When serious, it was like Maito Gai was a personification of stone, muscle and determination.

"We'll be there in twenty minutes, be prepared," the man called back to her. She nodded against his shoulder in understanding. "Like you said, we're approaching the station from the back side. You stay hidden where I leave you and don't come out whatever happens, alright?" Again she gave a tight nod, wordlessly. "Alright, so the guy with white hair, Hidan, is the one with the ritual who's going to attack Asuma-senpai. The tall one, Kakuzu, has five hearts which use all of the elemental jutsu, but in close combat I should watch out for his steely punches and reattaching arms. He's the more dangerous one."

"Right," she gurgled through stiff jaw, "But, when we arrive, if the entire team is already injured and incapable of fighting... you should give it up and get them out of there." Nestling her head more comfortably, Akane closed her eyes at a sudden lurch of her stomach, "No disrespect, Gai-san, but you can't fight these people on your own."

By the fall of his shoulders, she thought the man sighed. "But I can't let them get to Konoha either. Asuma-senpai also knows this. I'm sure that's why he's going to..." Gai stopped there, but didn't continue the thought. "Anyway," she heard him huff, "Nobody dies on the Green Beast of Konoha's watch, or- or I'll do one thousand pull-ups hanging from the Hokage monument!"

It was hard not to believe him.

* * *

"You can let go now," the Jounin tried to pry her fists open where she'd clawed at his clothes, "We're here."

Akane peeked through her stuck lashes and did as instructed, slowly, watching as her palms returned to their usual meaty pink colour, before she unsteadily stepped down from his back.

The girl dropped knee-deep into tall, thick grass, growing wildly in the middle of nowhere. The back-wall of the station by which they now stood was dirty-white and blotched in places with fuzzy, brown layers of moss. The two of them stood very still, observing the terrain and, if she concentrated, Akane thought she could hear a low murmur of voices somewhere in their vicinity. Yet there seemed to be nothing but grass, a wall, and sullen silence, pressing heavily from the sides like a bad omen.

_"Asuma! Behind you!" _the scream ripped throughout the air.

"Don't move!" the Jounin instructed shortly and not a second later he leapt onto the rooftop and then down to the other side of the station. Leaving her alone for the first time since she had left the hospital.

There was not a moment to waste.

The second Maito Gai was gone, Akane turned and ran.

She went directly for the other, far side of the station. The building was humongous, much longer than she estimated it would be, and it took her a few minutes of intense heart-thrashing and sweat-dripping to reach the left end of the wall. When she finally did, sinking to the ground noiselessly, she didn't dare poke her head around the corner and assess the situation.

The abdominal area to the right of her navel stung and her lungs pulled air in gasping heaves; she had to sit down to give herself some time to calm her breathing and listen to the protest of her weakened body. Months of complete inactivity had made her pathetically weak, she thought grimly, if she couldn't even endure a small run without keeling over in exhaustion.

But it was not the time for self-pity and so she forced her mind into cooperation. If her memory served her correctly (and she sure as hell hoped it did), the cry of warning they heard was probably Shikamaru's. If so, by localising the voice, the opposite corner-_this__ corner __here,_ she confirmed to herself_-_ was supposed to be closer to Asuma, who was most likely badly injured at this point in fight. There was a vague picture of the scene in her mind that supported the thought, but the girl couldn't be too sure of it. So much time had passed... what if she had remembered it wrong? What if the story had somehow spontaneously changed? What if Gai's mere presence had already altered the story altogether?

"The fuck are you supposed to be?" someone exclaimed close by, making her start at the harsh tone. "Stand. Still. _Dammit_!"

Gai's voice followed soon after, but she couldn't discern what exactly he was saying. One thing she had confirmed at least- by the distance of the voices, it seemed her theory was right. It was a good start, if anything.

The battle was obviously well underway. If she had to judge by the sharp noises of commotion emanating from the road, the shock of Gai's sudden arrival had passed and the fight was already intensifying. Short commands being shouted out, dull sounds of impact and clinking metal came from just around the corner and it finally dawned on the girl exactly how close she was to a scene of bloodshed-

how close to the infamous murderers of Akatsuki.

A sense of urgency flooded her at the realization.

Akane bolted upright, her stomach churning strangely, her head dizzy and hot. _Slowly__ now..._Her hand was starting to quiver again, so much that she had to support herself on the edge of the wall, the only thing hiding her from the sight of ninjas, right out of reach of real assassins. _I'll__ go __out __in __a__ second...__This __is __it...__Just __a __second __more..._ She knew that she couldn't procrastinate forever. She was supposed to come out quickly, right now even, and not let the fight drag on for too long, for who knew what could happen- bringing Gai into the whole thing was a dangerous risk by itself, much bigger than she dared acknowledge at the moment.

For the first time since she started meddling with the shinobi world Akane had truly _changed_ something directly; out of necessity, yes, but now she couldn't even guess the outcome of her own doing. Her knowledge of the near future was rapidly dwindling in this case. It was crucial to get to the zombie-duo according to her plan- and she had to do it ASAP.

Her stomach seemed to shrink and she felt terribly sick at the thought. _This __is __all __happening__ way__ too __fast. __What __if __they __kill __me __on __the __spot? __What __if__ they __mistake __that __I'm __hiding __my__ chakra __and __am __with __the __Leaf? __What __if __I __screw __this __up, __what __if __I-_

There was no time for anxiety. No time left to think.

Desperate determination pushed every ounce of hesitation out of her and, in the next moment, Akane gulped down a breath, smashed her eyes shut, and turned around the corner without daring another thought- dashing forward into the open field.

* * *

...when something hit her _hard_ across the face and chest, making sky and earth tumble around her. The girl fell backward, hitting the rough ground with a choked gasp.

Sunlight flared above her, blinding.

Ashen dirt stung at her eyes.

Unable to register what had just happened, barely thinking, Akane's hands went frantically to the hit area- and found that it was wet. And sticky. And...

_**Blood?**_

_T-They-__they..!_panic cut down her veins, _They__ hit __me.__oh__God.__I'm__ dying.__stabbed__ me.__am__dying. __they-_

Automatically, her hands went touching for the hilt of the kunai, scythe_, __whatever __the__ hell __it __is, _ready to rip the object out of herself in utter panic, not giving a damn that if she did so she would bleed to death... _Wha-?_

but there was nothing there.

Bewildered, Akane pushed herself back up to her feet, getting more confused than mortified by the second. Other than the dull ache from the fall, she felt no real pain; her head was spinning, terribly, but there was nothing sticking out of her chest- even though a bloodstain, bright red on her white shirt, was clearly visible.

_Oh__ God..._The girl released a panting breath. _I'm __ok.__ I'm __ok._ Her eyes fell down in relief. _Thank __y-_

She shrieked at the sight.

A severed human arm, cut from the elbow down, lay right under feet. The skin was freakishly black in colour with a chalk-white stripe running along it, smudged and wet with dark blood, almost as black as the skin itself. A yellowish bone was peaking out of its slimy dirty-red flesh. Squished under her very foot was the palm, gummy and still warm.

The nineteen-year-old girl stood glued to the spot, staring horrified at her blood-stained soles._ Frozen within herself._ Nothing she had ever seen on a screen years ago could have prepared her not to stumble back in screaming dizziness.

Accordingly, the girl kicked the appendage with all her might on panic-induced reflex, making it roll over limply only a few feet away from her, heavy as it seemed to be. At the same time, she jolted disgustedly back behind the corner. Something sour bubbled at the back of her throat.

_If__ I__ faint...__If __I__ faint __now.._

Nausea was threatening to overtake her. The terror of the instant sent her heart rate soaring.

Then it slipped away and for an absurd moment of complete blackout she wasn't quite sure what had upset her—but she didn't have time to dwell on it because behind the corner, a sound of kicked pebbles and dragging feet was growing steadily louder. "-hat's the deal first cutting my goddamned head off and n-"

The person was shouting- "-you fight 'em now..."

And it was quickly getting closer."-look, I'm getting my damn arm back first and when I do that kusottare is so gonna get i-"

Suddenly, the voice stopped.

"Well _hello_ there."

Right in front of her.

* * *

There, Akane saw death.

Fresh blood was splattered all over its coal-black neck and collar-bones; the hair so impeccably white that it clashed with everything but the bone-white lines emphasizing the rib-cage and a skeletal mask framing its wide, purple eyes. It was hard to tell if it was actually human.

The man (she acknowledged) picked up his arm and was holding it in his hand loosely, with a face terrifyingly impassive and head tilted quizzically to the side. The whole macabre act was performed in such an inhumanly casual manner that the hairs on her neck stood up. The stump where the severed limb belonged was profusely oozing blood down the side of his half-ripped coat and Akane had to make herself avert her eyes from it. Rather than risking a fatigue, the girl made a point of blandly staring at the male's face.

A suspicious smirk was making its way on his lips, like he was thinking something she wouldn't like.

So.

Akane stood particularly still, caught completely off guard. Somehow dumbly, in fact. "Ugh... Hidan-san," she fumbled for words, feeling awkward for even pronouncing the familiar name outloud, "I a-"

"Oi, Kakuzu!" Hidan turned his head briskly away from her. By now the suspicious smirk, she saw, had stretched into a huge, savage grin. "You won't fucking believe this- we've already found the bitch!"

. . .

_What?__ h__e__ said __that __as __if..._

Even if she had had anything to retort to the insult, the soothsayer would've given up- her vocal cords tangled with incredulity. _Were__ they __looking __for__ me? __But- __That __**can't **__be__ right-_

"Yeah, look, she's right here!" it didn't take another second and she was yanked from behind the corner, a heavy arm draped from around her shoulder to under her neck, with a limp dead one placed directly in front of her face. Scrunching her nose, Akane tried to back away from it, but managed only to get something smooth and cold pressed into her neck from the side. The male chest she was smothered against shook her around, as if to show her off. "No chakra, and she's got the hair, anorexia an' all. Fits the description, right?"

...instant. hate.

The girl craned her neck to try and glare up at him, "I am _not _anor-!"

"You, _shudup_, I'm talking here," she gasped when the air was roughly beat out of her chest- the pressure on her left shoulder had intensified and she was suddenly painfully aware that if the male pushed it just a notch further he would, intentionally or not, dislocate her shoulder with nothing but his brute strength alone.

"Who's that?" a familiar voice called out. "Hey isn't that that girl from-!"

"Akane-san!" Gai. "What are you doi-"

His words were cut off by a crash, a swish of water following immediately after and the sound of a wave smashing against the ground. The earth trembled beneath her feet. Akane tried to turn around and see what had happened, but all she could make out besides a bloodied arm held in front of her face was a shadowy form, looking entirely not-human and entirely intimidating, suddenly only a few meters in front of them. She couldn't see them, but the Konoha ninjas must have been blocked on the other side of it.

Another shadow fell over her when someone materialized near them a moment later, but Hidan's body remained passive and unalarmed to the sudden appearance.

"Idiot, what do you think you're doing yelling that out," a deep voice ground out. There was a moment of pause in which she could almost_ feel_ eyes trailing over her. "If her name really is Akane, maybe you're right. It explains how the Jounin knew everything about the situation the moment he got here."

Another loud crash exploded behind them; someone was shouting to regroup and get out of the way-

"Tsch, of course I'm right, who in their right mind walks around looking like_ this_," she felt a hand pull at her collar and any protest she had was choked in her throat when it cut into the front of her neck, "Eh? It says 'property of Konoha hospital' on this rag. Wasn't she supposed to be with that snake-basta-"

"Just take her and go, I'll stall them," she heard the other man order, at which her captor abruptly stiffened next to her.

"_Usero!_ I'm not leaving till I rip all of that _kuso__gaki_ limbs off!" Hidan growled next to her, clearly pissed off...

_B__ut__** what **__in __the __world __is __he __saying_? Akane listened to him, bemused. If he was swearing, which his tone implied- then just _woah,_ it must have been a whole new level of vulgar for her not to have heard it in three years she spent talking in Japanese!

And Hidan appeared to be picking up steam... "I mean, seriously Kakuzu! As if it isn't shitty enough that you want us to retreat and leave these _manko_ alive but-"

"Don't mess with me now Hidan..." Kakuzu's voice turned gruff, intimidating; Akane couldn't see the man yet, but she could swear she felt his killing intent simmering under her own skin. "I can't patch you up again with that guy's speed, and since we also need to guard this one, you're nearly useless with your one good arm. Take the girl away from here. I'll catch up to you."

"_Zakennayo...__"_ Hidan stood rigid, his furious breaths fanning down her bare neck; a sense of vulnerability overcame her at the sensation and made her clench her head tightly to her shoulders like a turtle. The Jashinist was literally trembling in bloodlust next to her and it was almost too easy to imagine him baring his teeth at anything and _anyone. _For a dangerous moment it looked like the younger male was preparing to either attack his partner or argue, but he only muttered a 'shit' under his breath into her scalp and then-

"You so owe me for this one." The girl yelped in surprise and indignation as a single muscular arm lowered to her waist and hefted, effortlessly throwing her over his shoulder.

"What are you-" Akane hit Hidan's back headlong, hanging upside down and swatting her hands frantically in imbalance, as his hand locked much too strongly for comfort around her knees. Her eyes bulged at his shoulder digging achingly into her ribs.

"Drop dead, Kakuzu, will ya?" Hidan saluted.

Obviously, the other criminal had nothing to add, because in mere moments they turned around and were off rushing in some unknown direction. With a surge of effort Akane pushed against the male carrying her as to lift her torso and see what was happening. There was a uniformed man falling under something like a black, glimmering smudge with arms and legs; some space beside it a green blur was rushing into a deadlock with a much taller cloaked figure, starting a struggle that defied all gravity and thought: each spin, each twist melted into another and another, much too fast for her to follow and comprehend. At least four more people were behind the black creature trying to hold it back, standing in something that resembled some kind of a formation-

- but it was all she could take in before she fell back with her forehead slapping against Hidan's naked, sweaty back.

"Wait a minute-!" she squirmed, struggling to get into a more comfortable position, yet only succeeding in worsening it: her hair dropped over her eyes like a heavy curtain, dangling to the earth and now being repeatedly kicked by the ninja's feet. She could only pray he didn't step and slip on it, ripping her head clean off her shoulders. To keep her hands from bouncing off his back repeatedly and getting cut off on blades of his scythe, the skinny girl was able to grab onto the surprisingly thick material of the cloak, tugging at it until she felt her nails being wrenched.

There was not a chance to orientate herself, see where they were going, or how far they already were from the bounty station. Her mind was jumbled up: all the information that came through her senses was registered incompletely, all her attention force-focused on the stabbing pain in her stomach and the feeling of blood rushing dizzyingly down to her throbbing head.

Had they even entered the forest? Where was Kakuzu? Which of the Leaf ninja had survived? What had changed?

"Hey you, Akami, alive back there?" she heard Hidan address her- which was, come to think on it, the very first time he acknowledged her as a human being capable of speech since he saw her by the exchange point. Needless to say, this approach didn't cope well with the girl.

"_Akane,_" she corrected him in a raspy, muffled voice, "and if you _must_ know-"

"Like I give a fuck, seriously," came the haughty reply, "So tell me what's happening at that shithole. Kakuzu coming back soon or what?"

Questions zigzagged through her head: just what was going on?

How did the Akatsuki get the information about her in the first place? Orochimaru had kept her under lock and key, and the same had happened in Konoha- both had went out of their ways to hush her existence up... so how was this even possible? Unless someone from either Sound or Leaf actually collaborated with the Akatsuki, they shouldn't have any knowledge about her at all, let alone know what she looked like as the two obviously did! It was still a good thing, seeing that she didn't need to convince them all over again about her being a soothsayer, but so many unanswered questions made her feel insecure about her knowledge of the world.

A few seconds of stunned silence had to pass for the the fake soothsayer to finally give a reply. "... so you... you really _do_ know about my ability."

"You don't say," Hidan sounded irritated with her, "If you're the real deal you should know what's happening, so spill it."

"If you must know, the Leaf team is going to get reinforcements," she said in one breath, if only to confirm her position as a soothsayer, "At the same time you are going to be called by your leader. It should happen soon enough and-"

"Holy shit!" the white-haired man exclaimed suddenly, "I mean, holy- She just said you'd call!"

Immediately, the girl stiffened. _Is __it...?_

"_You__ know,_ that girl Akako you nagged us about. Got her right here, we just found her with those Konoha heathens," with a jerk of his arm, the Jashinist hauled her more up over his shoulder, squishing her organs together as a result. "Yeah, Akane, that's what I said."

Breathless, Akane couldn't hope to speak up, instead listening to the conversation Hidan seemed to be having with himself. But she knew better than that- somewhere out there, the rest of the Akatsuki was assembling for the monstrous extraction ritual. _Pein._The thought was supposed to be downright terrifying, but it was hard to take it seriously when what she was apparently witnessing was a frustrated Akatsuki member going on a tirade.

"Sure I'm sure, Kakuzu just flipped me off to stall them, didn't give me the time to kill not even one. Can't fool me though, I know he just wants to get his stupid bounty, and later he's gonna play a goody-goody-two-shoes in front of you, but you know what? I won't let him, cause now you know that I'm the one who's doing all the work finding and then carrying this bitch while he's just-"

"Hidan, keep talking nonsense and I'll make sure to kill you once we're done with this," the soothsayer suddenly caught the sight of another black coat with red lining in her peripheral vision, _So stupidly fast, when did he even get here?_ "Leader, we'll explain everything once we get to the agreed location."

"Tsch, just try and say that everything I said isn't true, Kakuzu," the younger man said in a 'bite me' voice. Then he added, neutrally, "Back so early?"

"If you weren't so busy whining, you wouldn't be asking unnecessary questions now," Akane screwed her head to the side, staring at the crimson cloud on Kakuzu's back now; from her upside-down position his figure towered high above, menacing in its tall stature. "The Leaf got reinforcements, I had no time to kill the bounty. Our only mission now is to bring the girl to the Rain as soon as possible. Leader said the extraction will be postponed until our arrival."

"So what you're saying is that _he __totally __ignored __me_, the prick," the girl tensed when Hidan loosened his grip on her as he shrugged, sarcastically, "And here I was, pouring my heart out. But say, if he _wer_e listening I sure would have told him off good, huh? What d'ya think?"

When nobody replied for more than five seconds Akane realized that the question might have been aimed at her.

"What I think..." she spluttered, weakly, "is that you should put me down._ Now_."

* * *

As quick as they had left the station, they stopped moving, but to Akane the world seemed to continue turning around by itself. The sky had become overcast with heavy gray clouds, looking as if they were about to pour out any second, but were withholding for some reason known only to them.

"There ya go."

The civilian-girl was practically dumped on the grassy ground, and she had to sit down and lean heavily on her side, unable to stand straight from all she had witnessed in half an hours' time. Her face felt hot with blood; her knees were badly scraped and her whole rib-cage trembled. She didn't dare look but she knew that, beside her, her hand had taken to quivering once more.

Above her, a voice drawled, mildly annoyed, "What's the matter with her now? Seriously, it's not like she carried _me _or anything."

Bringing her eyes up to revolt against being spoken to in third person, Akane's mouth almost fell open at what she was seeing. Hidan was_ fanning_ himself with his own arm, ignoring the blood that was still dripping from it. "Kakuzu, fix me up now, won't ya?"

"Alright, but we've only got five minutes. We need to cross the border today if we want them to reconsider following us," the other man, to whom the deeper, serious voice belonged, approached them, giving Akane a full look at him for the first time.

Now, the nineteen-year-old had seen many intimidating people in the world of ninja by now, and while Kakuzu was by no means beneath them in any way Akane found that he didn't _frighten_ her in that sense of the word, not truly. Of course, if it weren't for the time she had spent in the Sound, the civilian-girl didn't have a doubt that she would have been pissing her pants in fright at their mere proximity at this point, but-

But Akane _had_ survived the Sound, had learned not to blink when facing grins filled with madness and to retain a clear mind against words dripping poison. Evil, _true_ evil, in all its ugliness, power and insanity that she had experienced firsthand, was not a thing of nightmares to her anymore, but merely acknowledged as something that just _is._

Being apathetic to this fact as she had become was what was truly horrifying, of course, but Akane was incapable of understanding that anymore.

No, what struck the girl the most when she settled her eyes on the immortal Akatsuki was the simple, physical strength of a _man_, clearly visible even under his volumous cloak. His whole appearance gave off a firm and superior aura_._ Akane couldn't remember the time when she had felt so physically vulnerable; compared to Kakuzu, strikingly tall, heavily clothed, broad-shouldered and clearly muscular, and having been carried by Hidan so effortlessly merely moments ago, the nineteen-year-old girl's worries about her own body preoccupied her mind- they made her painfully aware of just how skinny her arms were, how narrow her waist was or, simply put, of the entire weakness that came as merely being a a young, petite female.

It was a completely anti-feminist thought and completely trivial for the moment, but it was a thought that hit her all the same; she had to resist the instinctive urge to shy away from the two male's company and make herself even smaller.

Instead, Akane braced herself, collected her wits and kept her head up, staring straight at him as Kakuzu eventually stepped back from his partner after a minute and turned to her in return.

A dark cloth covered the lower half of his face, accentuating the bright red sclera and toxic-green of his irises, eyes alien and uncomfortable to look at. The long-haired girl didn't back away. She felt numb and only slightly confused, glad that she wasn't hurt and that she had finally gotten her chance to be there. It was finally time to put her plan into motion.

Strangely, the Akatsuki, as gory as all of her memories of them were, didn't incite any emotional reactions from her now that she was directly facing them. It was a fact: any ninja could kill her with a flick of his wrist, be it a mere Genin or an S-rank criminal. It was all the same to her. There was no point in cowering in front of them more than she had done from the rest of this world.

There was no point in stopping. In front of anything or anybody. Not anymore.

"You are Kakuzu-san," the soothsayer stated, feeling cold self-confidence worm its way into her system. She gave the man a small bow of her head, "I'm grateful to you, truly. For you to get as serious as to use your hearts in order to collect me was quite... flattering, in a way."

"Grateful?" the older man echoed slowly, his voice low and threatening, made even harsher by the mask. His strange eyes locked with hers, "I've just lost two invaluable hearts. Don't think you can play naive, girl, when you are the one who instructed that Leaf Jounin to aim for the masks on my back in the first place."

_He__ certainly __catches __on__ quickly, _Akane affirmed the thought, impressed with the way the veteran ninja established the connection in mere seconds. "Please don't misunderstand, I had to. In fact," she inserted calmly, "I used Maito Gai against you _exactly_ so I could join you."

Stretching remotely, Hidan cracked his neck in both directions. "Eh? What's she yammering on about?"

"You don't understand, do you..." a small, satisfied smile was playing at the corner of her lips as she explained, "You see, I wanted to be kidnapped. And so you kidnapped me." She already had the Akatsuki's trust in her knowledge. She wasn't responsible for any deaths. _Perfect._ "The situation couldn't have played out better, to be honest."

"HA, that's rich!" the Jashinist let out a bark of laughter, "Kuri-chan _wanted_ to be kidnapped. You hearin' this Kakuzu? I mean, who the hell wants that?"

"Someone with a worthy _proposition_ obviously," Akane replied icily; the whole tiring exchange with the rude man was starting to wear on her, "What I want to say is, I need you to understand that I have no intentions of escaping now that I've finally made contact with your team. I'm here because I want to be. Like I said, I need to speak with your leader."

Hidan made an effort to snort as best as he could.

Kakuzu didn't give a reply, merely gazing at her with those hard, unblinking eyes until she felt like he could read every uncertain thought running through her head. He didn't even need to say anything- the slow narrowing of his eyes was enough to send a cold wave of discomfort through her. He regarded her for a whole long, unpleasant minute, before finally nodding and turning away. "Good then. Because he's eager to speak to you too."

"And I admit I am a bit surprised by that," Akane snatched the opportunity to try and pick up as much as she could now that they were finally speaking to her at all," It's hard for me to believe that the Akatsuki, in return, knows so much about me, when Orochimaru, who is so _powerful_ and _famous_, had so carefully kept it a se-"

"Oh please, that guy's a joke," it didn't surprise her when Hidan bit the bait, experimentally flapping his newly attached arm into the air, "Che, practically served us the info on a plate when he decided to meddle with our business in Suna. The idea to send those weaklings so easily beaten by somebody like Sasori's underlings has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Right, Kakuzu?"

"Which reminds me," Kakuzu loomed over her, clearly having seen through her intentions, "How did _you_ get with Konoha?"

_Sasori's... underlings?_ It took those two words and_..._

_How..._

_How could __I __have __been __so __stupid __and__ not __have __realized __it __before! _

And all of a sudden, all at once, everything made sense: memories flashed in front of her eyes, revealing connections she was blind to before and, finally, in that splinter of a moment, Akane understood everything that had happened.

In the show, Sasori's underling was the guy with the goat-beard, an** Official **of _Sand_'s defence.

Orochimaru got the information that a Sand's** official** took a Sound ninja captive.

**That** must have been Sasori's spy, seeing that the Sand's Council denied her story that they had arrested any Sound ninjas.

And so, the Akatsuki had knowledge about her being with Orochimaru before they'd even seen her.

It all made such perfect sense!

It was embarrassingly clear to her now just what a mess she had made: all she had ever done by stubbornly claiming that the Sand's government was directly connected to the arrest of the Sound-thieves was make herself look like she was lying and put under even more suspicion by the Leaf! Not only had she almost created animosity between the Sand and the Leaf villages, only saved by Gaara's quick act of diplomacy, but she had obliterated any trust the two villages had had that she wasn't cooperating with Orochimaru! Her 'madness' was probably the only thing that had saved her from being trialled and thrown to jail, or worse...

"Konoha? I was... _rescued_ by them, so to say, at one point," Akane quickly recovered, replying to him in a practiced, even voice good enough to mask the trail of shock and anger at herself, "only to be suspected of spying for the Sound and then labeled insane for my claims of foreknowledge, of course." She moved her eyes slowly from one man to another, "I told them about you two. They didn't listen. But when you finally arrived, they made sure to send me to their front lines to instruct your opponents on your weak-points. This, however, was my plan from the very begi-"

"Still hard to believe we had to go through all that shit with these Leafs to get this girly, if you ask me," the Jashinist casually cut her off and even more casually propped his elbow on her shoulder, making her legs sink from his weight. He pointed with his thumb to her head,"What makes her so special? Sure, she got a few things right, but just fucking look at her! She's harmless as a kitten."

"What do you know anyway!" Akane snapped brusquely before she could stop herself. A sting of irritation nabbed her in the gut- _harmless_ was definitely not something she wanted to be called. Essentially she was, she knew that, but to be outright classified as such seemed insulting somehow-especially with the way various shinobi forces have been tossing her about like a hot potato.

To her utter indignation Hidan only gave her an incredibly bored look and even _dared_ click his tongue at her. "Ooooh, and she's an unfriendly little chijo, too. Don't think I haven't felt your hands back there. All in all, fucking great, like I needed another stick-in-the-mud."

Kakuzu turned only slightly. He didn't need to speak to communicate his intentions, his peculiar eyes more expressive than words.

"I was _kidding_," Hidan yawned, smacking his mouth distastefully, "Seriously man, learn to take a joke…"

"Just for that, you're going to be carrying her."

Akane blinked. "_Carrying?_ Excuse me, but I-"

"Yeah, whatever. I need to take a piss first."

… clearly, her mind supplied, it was going to be one _long_ walk.

* * *

_(after__ all, __what i__s __there __left __of you __to __lose __anyway?)_

* * *

_**Translation:**** Nunc ****quidem**** paululum ****a ****sole **- **Stand ****out ****of ****my ****sun ****a ****little.**_

* * *

**A quote from a Greek anecdote in which Alexander the Great, who was at the time the most powerful man in the world, came across Diogenes,a cynical, homeless philosopher, who was lying in the sun. Alexander said to the famous old man that he would grant him whatever wish he had, and all Diogenes replied was "Just stand out of my sun." It is said that Alexander was so struck by this, and admired so much the haughtiness of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers as he went away,"But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes."There are many variations of the story, but the point remains the same(in one variation, for example, Alexander was with a thousand of his troops, and after getting so ****marvelously brushed off, he ordered that they were all to go around the lying, unmoving-as-ever Diogenes;D)**

* * *

**Announcement: For the fans of the Sound medic Kabuto, author _RandomOne-Shot_ has written a one-shot about him and Akane, which is more (and I do mean to say much, much more) than worth checking out. So, feel free to do so. ;) Thank you again, RandomOne-Shot, and I meant every word of praise I said. The link can be found at my profile page.**

* * *

**A/N: I'm pleased to declare that we've finally hit the long awaited 'Akatsuki arc' with this chapter. (I can't believe the time has finally come, when I had first started thinking about writing it more than two whole years ago) Hidan and Kakuzu anyone? Hasn't it been far too long ago since we've seen the duo in action? (especially the Jashinist, poor baby stuck in a hole xD)**

**Tell me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong with this story in a review please.**


	32. Omnia mea mecum porto

**Chapter thirty-two:**

**Omnia mea mecum porto**

**A/N: So... are there any very, very, very patient people still reading this?**

* * *

Pitchblack skin, sweaty and glittering like tar only moments earlier, gradually faded to a clean peach underneath her dirty palms- a startling sight at which the girl got an absurd impulse to trace her fingertips over the _quite_ nicely shaped shoulder-blade.

Akane refrained from any such action though, not wanting to give the man the said shoulder belonged to any ideas. Gracious, who knew what _that _could lead to. Her foreknowledge hadn't been terribly useful before she threw a wrench in the storyline, and she definitely didn't need further complicating her life...

Perched upon the shoulder of an S-ranked criminal, Akane kept somberly quiet, consolidating her thoughts, sorting through personal experiences and recalculating against the idle, flickering memories of old comic books, until her mind hissed and boiled over, stunned after months at a soupy simmer.

So... What had happened?

Stewing in her own sour air, Akane had decided to leave everything she had come to know behind: the hospital and the prospect of love, the village of Leaf and the prospect of support, her old self and the prospect of redemption. There was bitterness and a jaded form of apathy in the way she regarded the world now, without even the thinnest sheet of hope underneath it. Any thoughts of companionship and _belonging_ and _caring_ terrified her now, now that she knew how it was to have it for even the slightest moment, and then lose it, so quickly and so painfully, like having a limb severed. A shadow of a boy, rebellious and witty and a pain in the ass lingered over her, but gradually drowned in the ever-growing darkness surrounding her.

Orochimaru was obsessed with knowledge and had even found her useful on occasion. Tsunade had dismissed her from the beginning on the basis of mutual distrust. She hoped that she'd at least be interesting enough to the Akatsuki for them to keep her around, just long enough for her to find Hana and then worm their way into the invasion of Konoha plan.

And so. What had changed?

Asuma was alive. But as it stood, so were Hidan and Kakuzu.

And what would that result in? No, Akane didn't care enough to think about the possibilities. It was no concern of hers. With a bit of luck she would find Hana and be out of this psychotic shithole before she could ever face the consequences of her actions. It occurred to her, briefly, that she should feel shame for those thoughts, selfish and cowardly as they were. But in shame's usual place she found only the blaring emptiness of a phantom limb- the absence didn't bother her as much as she felt that it should. Morality, it seemed, had taken a back seat to survival along her way.

_**This...**__ this is troubling, _Akane concluded. The trip to Rain had been quiet thus far – entirely too quiet. She could swear she'd carried sacks of rice back in Futari with more regard than how Hidan carried her now. Crazily, insanely, she found herself wishing to fill the silence that has fallen upon them, the long stripe of empty seconds stretching between them, and waited to be prompted to speak – but nobody addressed her at all. Anything she thought of to break the silence felt trite and pointless. Orochimaru had at least played the manners game, and at the asylum she'd at least been given some regard, if only as an invalid. These two, however – they wouldn't so much as humour her.

_Does nothing I say matter at all? _The acidic thought fizzed on the surface of her mind.

At the same time, though Akane had to admit to herself that she was terribly relieved for the lack of further interrogations. As it turned out, her "abilities" didn't sit well with Hidan, who dismissed any and all "buncha superstitious mumbo-jumbo" as heresy. They weren't held in high respect by Kakuzu either, when he found out that her predictions couldn't be used for "anything of substance", by which she was sure he meant stock market predictions and bounty hunting. Akane had lost value in their eyes quicker than she could have ever imagined- it seemed as if the two had come to a mutual agreement to leave it up to their leader to extract whatever usefulness for the Akatsuki he saw in her.

Quite honestly, most of the time the Zombie-duo seemed at a complete loss as to what to do with her.

Accordingly, she was ignored, a day's conversation consisting mainly of sharp "Get a move on's" and "You've got five minutes." Hidan, obviously bored with his life, would occasionally try to strike up a conversation with Kakuzu. Even without preemptive insight, it was blatantly obvious that the two shared a testy relationship. Akane felt for anyone who'd ever been caught in the crossfire of one of their "domestics''. Of the two, Akane felt more at ease around Kakuzu, even though she knew she shouldn't be. Kakuzu's temper was worse than Hidan's by far, said her factual knowledge, but he had none of his younger partner's belligerence, keeping mainly to himself. His whole appearance was stiff and grim, with a predictable, perpetual look of murder in his eyes. But Hidan had an edgy and untamed air around him, like he wouldn't hesitate at any moment to take her by her neck, just for the hell of it.

As the hours floated by, Akane drifted in and out, not following the duo's conversations, but trying to subtly squirm into a position that would neither squash her innards or clang her head on the lowest of the three scythe blades glaring ominously up at her. She couldn't breathe. The air was too heavy and too dry. The temperature hadn't dwindled in the afternoon: summer-hot sun stung and burned through her, making her duck her head and lower her eyes. It didn't help that the trees were bare, tall and slim white as they broke out of the cracked earth around them like a forest of fine bones.

The first few times Hidan had deposited her on the ground for a break, she'd wound up sputtering on her ass in the dirt. This time, though, she recognized the telltale lurch just in time to gain her footing, at least enough to collapse under the nearest birch-white trunk.

_The Land of Fire sure earned its name__, _she thought and promptly spilled some water over her collarbones. It was only late March, yet the soil was hard and baked in this part of the country, with surviving sharp gray batches of grass and blood-red poppies breaking it here and there. Her mouth was dry, full of road dust that crunched painfully between her teeth. Akane drew absent pulls from the half empty cantine they'd passed her: she grimaced around the nozzle even as her jaw worked at the stale, tepid contents, more out of necessity than any real enjoyment or relief.

Her bowels gave a loud rumble. Not that anybody cared, of course.

As soon as this five-minute break was over (no more than five-minutes, of course, because "time is money," ordered the stern green stare), Hidan would fling her over his shoulder (unnecessarily roughly, the girl grumbled, even though she presumed it was probably the only way in which the Jashinist did anything) and continue on walking. For her part, Akane would snipe a few spiteful words as a formality of pride, which would in turn go utterly ignored before she at last slumped over his back, defeated and staring down the faded road behind them as it kept bobbing up and down in the rhythm of Hidan's long, heavy steps.

There was a particular brand of tiredness in his movements, the kind that stemmed from tedium and complacency. Hidan landed on his feet roughly, putting his whole weight into it, which resulted in uneven steps and a gut-jerking rhythm and an _increasingly_ aggravated passenger. But that wasn't the worst of the young girl's discomforts. Oh no, what had set her teeth on edge since the beginning of the trip and made her count seconds to calm her blood was not the blatant disregard of her as a human being, not the dismissal of her importance, but-

"Would you please just stop that already?" she hissed for the umpteenth time, spasming in an internal fit of indignation.

Every now and then when his brains obviously gave out, Hidan's hold of her legs would all of a sudden slacken and she'd drop helplessly down his back, swatting her arms for dear life. She'd grind her teeth until he, equally absentmindedly, pulled her back up by a quick, not at all pleasant, tug on the legs. Then, only minutes away, he'd do it again.

Around the friggin' clock.

"Huh?"

...and all she could ever get in reply was an uninterested hum. As expected, Hidan paid her no heed whatsoever. This time, holding up no longer, Akane pressed two knuckles between his ribs and dug them in, needling for his attention. Doing the gesture, she couldn't help but think how haggard and desperate she looked... but she was beyond the point of caring. "I said, could you _stop_?"

"What? I'm not doing anything."

Oh. Oooh, there was definitely a smirk embedded somewhere in there. If Akane hadn't known any better (oh who was she kidding she_ did_ know better) she would have thought that Hidan was simply bored and she was the only decent toy within reach.

"If this is too much of _a chore _for you to do properly, I can always walk by myself," she repeated in an equally tired, equally irritated manner as she had done during their last conversation that morning, when he had first slung her over his shoulder, "There's no need for this..."_ humiliation,_ she wanted to finish, but held her tongue. If the Akatsuki's number one sadist knew just how much she actually minded being carried, no doubt he'd be sure to make it all the worse for her one way or the other.

"Tough," came the aloof reply. Up and down. Bouncing. Damn. He _was _doing that on purpose, the son of a- "As much as I'd love to just _drop _you, girly, you'd slow us down. So, you're staying right up," another jerk, not at all unintentional, proved his point, "here."

Jesus he could_ not_ be that bored.

Her head was swishing with blood, the fatigue creating a headache that pounded behind her eyes. "Now _you _listen here. I have been hanging upside-down for half a day now," Akane growled over her shoulder at the back of his head, "The least you can do is have your fun in some other way rather than trying to make _me_ turn unpleasant."

A brief, almost thoughtful silence followed her words.

Then she jumped out of her skin when the man beneath her burst into roars of laughter, bouncing her high up in the air.

"Bwahahaha, you hearing this shit?" Hidan gasped between wheezing gasps, addressing no one in particular- Kakuzu was as apt at ignoring the younger man as they were both at ignoring her. "Aw c'mon Akami, y'know I'm doing you a favour here," the Jashinist gave her another small good-natured bounce with his shoulder, a nudge of sort, before he continued in the same grinning voice, "I bet you're one of those girls who like to be on top anyway."

… Akane's knee-jerk reaction was to just_ kick_ the son of a bitch into oblivion, but was sure that was exactly what the masochistic bastard was waiting for. No, _no_, he would not get a rise out of her. She was more dignified than that. She would do nothing but make herself feel better with an audible scoff of derision, thus sneering, "Oh you have me _utterly_ seduced."

Unfortunately, sarcasm didn't work on idiots, and it was only getting more obvious that Hidan was much, much more bored than Akane had initially guessed.

"Well, lookie who's warming up to us, ey, Kakuzu?" She repressed a squeak as he patted the backs of her thighs, a grin in this tone as he continued, "Told you this one's got a thing for me. Too bad for ___pechapai_ here that I don't fuck _children_._"_

... he should have stopped there. He really should have, the insult had already made the proud girl bite her knuckles to hold back a sharp-tongued reply. But obviously Hidan liked the sound of his voice _way_ too much, as he continued to prattle on.

"But who knows?- if I make her mad enough to want to hurt me- like, _really_ hurt me- then maybe- "

"Then _maybe_," Akane raised her voice an entire octave in a shriek to cut him off before she heard more than she could take, "maybe you could stop referring to me in third person because- well lo and behold!- I'm right _here_."

She tapped her fingers on his back, loosing tact, and feeling very much like having the upper hand in this conversation found herself snapping crossly at him, "The nerve to even joke about me in that way anyway! You might want to have just _a bit_ more respect for me, Hidan-san, because if it weren't for me, let's just say that you'd be lying disemboweled, eating dirt in a ditch somewhere and-"

The 'and' died in her throat when she was slammed into the ground- in the next moment she was lying flat on her back, her spine cracking at the impact, eyes rolling in her skull, unfocused-

"Che. Maybe you are the one who should learn a bit of respect... learn to be a bit more... thankful..." there was strange high pitch in Hidan's voice from up above her as it grew into a satisfied chuckle, "that I don't _rip you open_ right here."

…

… looking up,_ slowly slowly slowly,_ Akane stood face to face with a crimson blade, just brushing the tips of her eyelashes.

Her heart soared into her throat.

Open-mouthed, she stared at a handsomely chiseled face, not much older than her, towering over her prone form, threatening, closing her escape. Hidan rested an elbow on one knee, the three-bladed scythe glistening huge in her eyes, _closer, closer,_ until its tip pressed lightly into her cheek, bitingly cold. Her blood froze, and she might have imagined it from the intensity of the moment, but Hidan's eyes had a reddish gleam to them in the direct afternoon sunlight. "You have no idea," his words turned fast, excited, "you have no idea how pleased Jashin-sama would be to taste the blood of a young-"

A spray of brilliant red exploded in her eyes.

Akane jerked her head away on instinct, slamming her eyes shut.

Startled enough to swallow a scream,

at once dizzy with horror-

Hidan's headless body collapsed at her feet, blood gushing in jets from the glistening, almost medical cross-section of his severed neck, spine and trachea a startling white against the gasping pit of his esophagus, now leaking all over her white tabi socks and soaking in, quickly. The blood was splattered all over her, she felt from the way her clothes felt hot and heavy, and the sudden thought that she was _covered in another human's blood from head to toe_ made her want to roll on her stomach and retch until she bawled out her intensities. Above her stood Kakuzu and, before she knew what had happened or had the time to consciously register a bloodied kunai clutched in his fist, Akane was being yanked up by the elbow into an unsteady stand.

The body, twitching under her feet, made a gurgling sound from the wound, and then stilled.

Akane couldn't move her eyes away from the meaty severed neckline protruding from the bloodsoaked cloak. Her mind had gone point black; her senses and muscle control seemed to be coming back to her at a stupefied pace. Only after she regained her footing did she ultimately sober up when the tall man shook her by the shoulder with a gruff "Walk," navigating her whole with his huge hand. At the same time Kakuzu inclined his head over his back as to add casually, "And you better follow us. Don't make us waste any more time with your idiotisms."

In reply, there came a hushed voice. "What... is... this?"

"Whatthe fuck is this, Kakuzu _you rotten cunt_?!" the voice was a shriek now, a furious shriek at that, and as it pierced Akane's ears and all the way to the heavens, Kakuzu stood coldblooded and as still as a rock beside her, while it continued to screech around them, "Hurts like a bitch! The hell, tell me, the FUCKIN hell did you do that for! And "follow"?! FOLLOW?! **f****ollow **you say? You damn well know I can't _follow_ nor walk, nor COME UP THERE AND SLICE YOUR BALLS OFF if you don't get me up, so don't you dare- ooooh don't you dare look _down_ on me now, because when I get up, Kakuzu, when I _get. up_.-"

"You attacked our hostage," Kakuzu's tone was so calm and matter-of-fact that it raised the hairs on her arms, currently clutched in his steely grip. The haze in her mind hadn't settled and Akane tried to follow Kakuzu's green-eyed glare, focused down to the ground bellow. "If you were to kill this brat then-"

_"_I wasn't going to_ kill_ her," and there was a _head,_ white hair smudged with red and pink pieces of flesh, rolling in a growing puddle of blood like a turtle turned upside-down, "I was just going to scare the bitch a little!"

...and Akane stared.

She stared, and her heart pumped, and her mind told her that it _was_ to be expected of Hidan, that talking heads were_ nothing _abnormal here, that she had damn well _watched _the series and this. Was. (Jesus. Fucking. Christ) **normal**_..._ but her body wanted to twist around itself and drop unconscious all the same.

"Come _on_, all this because of- I mean, seriously, Kakuzu, seriously?! I can't believe it, what's wrong with-" Hidan's head sucked in a breath, staring wide-eyed at his partner as if seeing him for the first in his life. "Kakuzu," he said then, serious, "there's something _seriously _wrong with you."

The hea- _Hidan_, shared a brief eyebrow-raised 'can you believe this guy?' look with Akane, who stood paralyzed on her spot looking at it-_- him,_ before he looked back at his partner and abruptly screamed out, "Get with the program for once, you humourless _dick!"_

… the shaking in her bones had yet to settle, but Akane smashed her eyes tightly shut, drew in a lungful of shuddering breaths, and tried her very hardest to accept her defeat in the logic of this place, which she could never fully accept. Hidan was a head, and he was alive, and breathing, and screaming his head off, and that's how he rolled. Literally.

Point taken: that head down there? It could have been hers.

It could have been her own bloody brain, dripping off the needly blades of grass, being slurped in by the thirsty earth.

… if the thought was any less horrifying, it would have probably been, depending on one's point of view, either fascinating or ridiculous: the way that she could travel for more than three hours in silence with the criminals of the Akatsuki, but the first three minute conversation got her almost beheaded by the violent Jashinist.

When had she even acquired this talent at rubbing people the wrong way? Akane didn't know.

No matter if Hidan had been truly joking or not, there was nothing naïve about the lone bloody line slicing across her cheek, as if drawn with a red marker by a mischievous child. Akane lightly dragged her palm over it, feeling the sliced skin part under her fingers and peel in the same direction she dragged her palm across.

"We're making a stop here." Kakuzu grabbed Hidan's head off the ground, which, in return, glared two steaming holes through him.

"Well no shit," Hidan rolled his eyes furiously, "Not like I'm going anywhere looking like this, right? I swear, you always do that! Can't you just let me play around for a bit before you turn psycho and go all 'oh I'm gonna chop off _your goddamned head off now!_'" His cheeks and ears reddened, "A little warning might be nice next time, huh, how bout that?!"

If Akane hadn't known any better, she would have thought that Hidan looked more like was _flushing in embarrassment_ about the fact that Kakuzu got one over him in front of her, rather than angry that his partner had just cleaned his entire head off of his shoulders! Then Akane stopped for a moment to puzzle over just witnessing the phenomenon of a _bloodless_ severed head _flushing_, of all the things that went against the basics of biology, but quickly vanquished the thought as another futile attempt at being reasonable. As the aforementioned head dangled by its hair in Kakuzu's fist, it made its best effort to glare daggers at the world around it. Once Hidan's eyes targeted her, his lips tightened.

Akane straightened up further in defiance, a deeply rooted reflex.

Hidan stared her down for a few more cold passive moments before he opened his mouth to speak. "Jashin-sama must be majorly pissed at me for not slaughtering those Leafs when he sent _you_..." he said to her then, his tone that of a petulant schoolyard bully.

"You..." Akane blinked. Shocked. Unbelieving. She shook her head to clear her mind before she brought it up to stare wide-eyed at him once more. "You wanted to _kill_ me!"

"Yeah, well, you deserved it," Hidan made his point across the only way he could- by rolling his eyes furiously at her, "And I said I wasn't going to kill you, geez. Cut you up a bit maybe. 's all."

"Hold still, Hidan."

"AH! FUCK KAKUZU! That hurts!"

_He..._

_He is **mad.**_

Akane grabbed her head to help it process the last five minutes, but the treatment worked poorly. She had yet to grasp the full depravity of these people, and what little of it she had just experienced firsthand already unsettled her. Still in daze, she carefully took off her tabi socks, ruined beyond repair with Hidan's blood, before disgustedly throwing them away. Some of it had soaked through the material, smearing her fingers red and sticking under her toenails. She couldn't do the same for her clothes unfortunately, even though she very much itched to do so. Dried earth crumbled between her toes now; drying blood crinkled in the creases of her gown. She could feel the heat of wound on her stone-rashed knees and had to sneeze out the dirt in her nostrils. Her heart rate was gradually subsiding.

As quickly as the incident occurred, everything turned as silent as if nothing had happened at all.

Creme coloured clouds spilled over the sky, bubbling in the heat of the sun. Life went on, and the two men were as neutral as ever, and Akane sat, bewildered at the sheer indifference of it all. She had almost died! _Died!_ And the world around her showed no recognition for her situation. Stunned at the empty aftermath of what had probably been one of the most frightening moments of her life, with nothing to say or do, Akane simply sat, dumbfounded, and watched Kakuzu work in silence on Hidan's neck, noting with mild nausea the redness and swelling where the stitch entered the skin. In and out, in and out, a black crisscross trail left behind it- her eyes followed the black thread where it disappeared into the sleeve of Kakuzu's cloak, wondering for a moment of morbid curiosity what the man's monstrous form might look like in broad daylight. The corner of her mouth twitched against her will in an almost imperceptible expression of disgust.

Just what the hell had she gotten herself into?

The nineteen-year-old girl felt completely lost between the crisp-blue sky and the monotony of the colours; the ochre of the earthen roads, the ashen green of the starving grass, the stark red sprinkled all over the place. All of it, the sun, the smell of fermentation with a metalic bite of blood- it muddled her sight and roiled her resolve. She fully felt like giving in and letting the exhaustion take its toll...

"Eat this," something was pushed into her hands and her fingers crinkled around aluminum foil. It contained what looked like dry chunks of meat. No questions asked, Akane dug in and gobbled the brown pieces down in an instant. She chased the salty, wooden flavor down with a gulp of tinny water.

Akane couldn't stifle a sigh. It felt heavenly.

"Thank you," she murmured absentmindedly, then leaned forward and steepled her fingers together, elbows on her knees, enjoying the feeling of her stomach finally having something to digest. Kakuzu didn't reply. After one odd look, he turned away from her and went back to finishing Hidan's stitches.

"Wonderful gesture, Kakuzu, wonderful, I'm touched. And you, _yariman_, you see that?" a faint trail of blood dripped down Hidan's nearly-stitched neck as he cocked his head at her in a mocking smirk, "You too can be nice and obedient when you put some brain-muscle into it."

There was a greedy arrogance in his expression and a stance that Akane found disturbing. _A challenge,_ and she answered it silently by narrowing her eyes and lifting her chin slightly—

oh, this was far from over, and he _better_ know it.

* * *

As the day wore away, her two companions became more silent between themselves: more alert. No more arguing. No impromptu stitching-ups. Nada. Even with the power the girl knew both men possessed, the dangers of the night were still just that- _dangers-_ and it seemed ninja were trained not to leave anything to case.

And the night crept up to them like flood tide, washing over the horizon of dimming light with pools of dark-blue shadow and elusive stars. Wind howled in her ears and treetops clawed the air, the branches resonating in a trembling clatter. A distinct odour could be sensed in the air:

A storm was brewing.

Akane shuddered, the small hairs on her neck standing up and her toes curling at the breaths of cold sweeping over them. She had expected that they would switch their route in the direction to the first paved road they came across, then proceeding towards the twinkling warm lights of one of those civilian villages she could make out in the valley bellow, or for them to make a stop and find shelter between the thickest clusters of wood at the very least. None of her expectations were met, however, as the Akatsuki duo kept walking down the dusty forest road, wordlessly, as if the breakdown of the heavens wouldn't concern them in the least. Their thick black coats billowed out behind them like wraiths in the increasing gusts of wind, while all Akane could do was swing her hands meekly down the Jashinist's back and tremble in the pressing cold.

Fifteen minutes later, there was no rain still, but thunder rumbled somewhere, beyond the village in the valley, and beyond the dark fields that stretched like the sea behind it, and the mountains with silver-moonlit peaks behind them even further away. The three of them were trailing the very outline of the forest of dead trees on their left side, taking the road at the edge of a steep hill on their right as they passed the last lights of the distant village. Akane wondered if the ninjas anticipated an ambush within the forest or the village, and hence weren't about to consider either side an option. As much as she gathered, they were basically somewhere at the border. Konoha's patrols must have gotten a word about them by now, so between enduring a raging storm and alerting an entire ninja batallion, the decision was obviously well made- hope that they could avoid the heart of the storm and continue on straight ahead. No lefts and no rights.

Hidan's shoulder kept tensing from time to time; they were small, twitchy jerks that made Akane pull her hands back and stiffen in anticipation as well_._ _Can it be that Hidan is nervous? _She peeked to the side, catching a glimpse of a crimson-red tip of a blade at the Jashinist's sash._ Or is he just frustrated that he can't go wreaking mindless slaughter? _Akane wondered if Hidan knew what his older partner was thinking, as no doubt the careful and suspicious Kakuzu was the one who took such high caution and considered safety of their trip a priority when he decided their course.

"Hey. Hey, Kakuzu," Hidan said suddenly.

Akane stilled.

She heard the older criminal grunt in question.

"You know we just passed a whole fucking village of taverns and the sky is gonna take a leak any time now, right?" Hidan's voice sounded like it had a _wee_ bit of an edge to it.

"I am aware."

Then it happened. Hidan stopped.

And then he exploded.

"So how about getting us a goddamn roof over our heads for a change, huh? How about that?! You greedy bastard, to think I actually listened to you! 'Oh be quiet now, Hidan!' 'Oh shut up Hidan!' I mean what the fuck, you just wanted me to think there was some shit actually going on and let you take us away from the last Fire village for miles before you actually have to take your wallet outta your goddamned ass and pay for a fucking room!"

. . .

_...nope, the idiot didn't even figure it out for himself. _If Akane could have sweatdroped, she would have done so a thousand times over. Seriously, to think that _she_, a civilian, understood Kakuzu's strategy right away, and a trained ninja who lives with the guy, no less couldn't even-

… wait. Why wasn't Kakuzu instructing Hidan to be quiet now? Surely if there was really a possibility of a patrol somewhere close by, and Hidan was not being Miss Discrete with yelling his head off, Kakuzu should be... wait a minute... then could it be that...?

Kakuzu kept smugly quiet throughout Hidan's entire tirade.

_Shit. Hidan's right. We've been swindled!_

And to judge by Hidan's continued cursing into the night, it wasn't the first time he fell for it...

* * *

Akane didn't know how she managed to fall asleep, let alone _stay_ asleep through the entire night, but she did. The sun was not yet up when she woke, neck stiff and bleary-eyed. It took her a few bumps to remember where she was, why she was hanging upside-down, and then promptly swallow the nausea that rose from her stomach. Hidan seemed to notice that she was up at that point, and broke the predawn hush with a cheery, grinning good-morning. Apparently, they had gotten lucky and avoided the storm last night.

She hadn't noticed when exactly the terrain had shifted to thistle and weed either- hour after hour they waded through fields of stubble, which seemed from her vantage point to stretch into hazy infinity. Dry plants rubbed rough and scratchy against her skin- they were so tall here that, even though she was being carried, Akane felt them brushing over her ankles, pricking and making her itch. Sharp straw stuck in her too tender toes, arch, heel.

Another mostly silent mile and the scenery peeled away into naked rock stained with lichen. Deep ravines, like monstrous gaping mouths, gave an air of still sterner solemnity to the place. Somewhere in their depths, Akane could hear the throaty gurgling of water.

Kakuzu's steps turned more urgent and his orders issued with more bite.

_The Land of Waterfall,_ was the unsaid premise, which Akane understood immediately. Apparently, they had managed to pass through the Land of Fire safely sometime as she slept- but they were just as unwanted and just as easily recognized there. She didn't need more proof to support her assumption than the unconscious trips Kakuzu's hand made to trace over the rusted line carved over his village's symbol.

A woodpecker laughed somewhere at day's rising. It was as if low woodland had grown around them all at once and the quiet of the sun-fried fields was left behind. Birdsong danced in shrubbery and trees, a chorus, symphony, cacophony, '_It's mine' _understandable in any language. A squabble, a warning, a rat-tat-tat repeated, an echo off the hard wood of old trees with spreading dark stains, dampish, smelling of fermented pear with many pecked holes, some foaming white bubbled froth, like spittle.

The air was cool in the woods and the rustling in the air intensified as they broke their way through the bushes. Soon enough Akane realized that it wasn't the wind making the sound, but inviting bank of a river, which soon stretched slow and wide in front of them. A couple hundred yards downstream it curved away, frothing over jagged rocks. A deeper, almost suddering roar seemed to indicate a waterfall beyond the rapids. It was only when they reached the bank that Kakuzu stopped, scanning their surroundings for a moment. "Let's-"

"Phew, finally, water! Thought I'd suffocate in that wasteland, seriously." Hidan surprised her by literally throwing her to the ground, scraffing her elbow on a river-rock as she slammed into the ground. Akane hissed at the sting, but made no comment as it would likely encourage Hidan to do it again later on. She pushed herself upright, ankles crossed, and chose to ignore him- she was so thankful for taking the break that she didn't even feel like shooting him a dirty look. She reached for her bottle and tilted it to her dry lips. The river looked clean enough, she observed, so maybe she could do a refill here...

"Go on, get naked."

_"-what?_" Akane spat a mouthful, recoiling. She looked up at Hidan who was, to her growing dread, in the process of taking his cloak off. She looked left and right for Kakuzu, who was surveying their surroundings, clearly uninterested.

Her eyes went back to Hidan, his torso already bare, and her jaw slackened. "Just what are you _doing_?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm gonna wash all this nature junk off me," the Jashinist looked at her as if she were stupid, "Follow my lead. Seriously, you fucking reek."

"I'm not-" Akane gulped down thrice before glaring at him, pointedly, "I'm not getting in there with you."

"Yeah, suit yourself," Hidan shrugged, scrunching the cloak into a black pile at his feet, then kicking it in her face. Frowning, Akane scratched it off of her nose with both hands, and made to throw it right back at the annoying prick, when-

She jerked her head to the side, eyebrow twitching.

For Pete's- did he really need to do this _completely_ nude?

Akane didn't think of herself as a prude, but the whole thing was making her feel just plain uncomfortable. She barely knew the guy and here he was, stripping stark naked! Of all the weird situations that Akane could deal with, and indeed had, this was totally out of her zone. She didn't dare turn around until she heard a decent splash of water, after which she snuck a peak to check if the water covered him at least up to his waist.

It didn't.

… damn, Hidan really was a _cheeky _son of a-

**_Once_** she finally confirmed to herself that it did, Akane huffed and whipped his things closer to the river-bank. She noted that he still wore his pedant, shimmering silver, around his neck. "Just get decent quickly," she said, muttering.

Kakuzu had discarded his cloak at some point as he sat himself on a nearby rock. Akane looked at him askance, not wanting him to think she was staring, even though she knew that her discretion was wasted on him. Kakuzu's skin was dark, glossy and sort of tightly-pulled, like the surface of a football. He had put aside his head-covering as well, and his irisless eyes stared at the vast blue sky overhead, his expression curiously blank. If he was recalling some long-forgotten childhood anecdotes about the place, or reminiscing about the days he had spent serving the Waterfall village, he wasn't the type to share. And Akane wasn't suicidal enough to ask.

Ants scurried around her feet; she hadn't noticed she had settled too close to an anthill and quickly scrambled away, which so happened to be closer to the river bank. After a moment's consideration and a look at the bloody soles of her feet, she dipped her feet into the water and instantly shuddered at the cold.

The air's smell entwined her, distinctive, chaparral scent, perfume of earth, leaves, flowers, warmth, occasional animal, shrubs, and pine. It all served to ease her mind and soon the girl was beginning to relax. It would all be good. As long as her two cohorts ignored her and she ignored them, they would make it to the Rain in no time, and then she would do what she must.

A dragonfly, blue with gradient to shimmering green, leaped to her knee; she wiggled and it made a circle around her head, only to find its way to her foot. This time she didn't bother shooing it away.

"I meant what I said," she heard Hidan say, "I'm not carrying her if she continues smelling like she's been rolling in the dirt all day."

"I'm just fine here, thanks," Akane droned without paying him a glance.

"Admit it, you just wanna sit there where you can get a better look at this," she heard the unmistakable whoosh and splash and trickling gurgle of a body rising rapidly from water. Hidan cackled, "Hey, are you blushing? Are you shitting me? She's really blushing! Ahahahaha..."

The girl really was getting flushed, _but_ _scarlet with fucking burning anger,_ wishing the irksome idiot would quit his blabbering once and for all and allow her just a moment's peace. Oh if only he could roll over his scythe, and die ten bloody times over!

Akane drew a long breath as she mentally brushed off another of his blatant provocations. "Yes, Hidan, you're absolutely right. You got me utterly captivated with your impressive vocabulary and most dazzling manners. I've grown so unbearably hot for you that I might just go along and drown my passion into the river. As a matter of fact," she straightened up to her feet, throwing her hair back in mockery, "I think I'll go do that right now."

She needed to get away from this guy, before he completely drove her completely insane. Akane turned around in the opposite direction from him, fully intending to leave-

"Well here," when she stiffened; Hidan's voice was coming from _right _behind her, "Let me help you with that then."

Before she could say or do anything, one leg shot out from under her, and she was faceplanting in the putrid muck when she was yanked back by the other, and then pulled backwards sharply. Her arms shot out to grab at something, anything, fingers clawing and twisting in the weeds growing on the bank, but despite it found herself dragged up to the waist into the ice-cold water.

"No!" she spluttered, but in the very next moment found herself incapable of breathing: her vision blurred, ears clogged, and suddenly there was water all around her. The hospital gown tangled in her feet, but there was a hand at her throat, clenching tightly and holding her. Primitively, her body kicked out and struggled wildly as Hidan held her under water.

Her lungs lurched. Nose stung. _But he still wasn't letting her go! _Her mind wheezed and she gasped and choked against his grip, shaking her head like a ragdoll being shaken by a malevolent child. Her ears began to ring and she tasted blood where she had accidentally bitten the inside of her cheek-

_Blue-** drowning**- screeching**- he's going to- going- to-!**_

Hidan yanked her back up by the throat and her lungs filled with a desperate heave, now bursting with air. Sunlight pierced through her blinking eyes, searing her brain. She couldn't think straight. Her neck throbbed and stung... her heart was frantic.

"Nah, I don't think the situation's improved here yet."

Not another breath and her head was forced underwater again; but Akane was more prepared this time. She grabbed at his hand to try and push him away, and as she did so her fingers scraped against the metal surface of whatever he was holding in his palm- _his rosary_- and she yanked it, panicking, refusing to be a part of Hidan's demented christening. But her efforts fell flat: he swatted her hand away and tightened his grip, the buzzing in her ears soared- wisps of red swirled around her until red swamped over her entire vision-

And the pressure was gone.

Akane broke out of the water, coughing, stumbling for the shore, her long hair and gown making her moves more jerky and frantic as they kept tangling around her feet.

She wiped around in alarm, scrapping her knees further on the rocky shore.

Hidan was nowhere in sight.

Without a coherent thought more, Akane collapsed onto the bank, rolling to her side. Trembling like a madman. She was so terribly cold. Her dripping clothes hung heavy on her, her own body felt overbearingly so, her head freakishly light in contrast as her lungs went choking on air.

_Breathe._.. She propped herself on her elbows. _Steady..._ Blinked to clear her eyes. Kakuzu wading through the water towards her, dragging a limp body by its arm. He looked at her and pointed at the river behind him.

"Fish his head out," he said.

It took Akane only a moment to realize that what he was referring to was-

A trail of angry bubbles broke the surface of the river.

Oh.

She mutely nodded.

_Chop number two then._

* * *

_On the second day of Christmas..._

The night came earlier in the Land of Waterfall than in the Land of Fire, coolly touching skin. Tall slim trees rose black against a navy background, the partial moon and first stars striking bright points in the darkening skies.

For obvious reasons, Kakuzu didn't trust Hidan with carrying her anymore, but he couldn't be bothered to do so himself, hence Akane was left walking on her own two legs now, much to her joy and relief. She opted for walking by Kakuzu's side, where he could see her, and where he could easily reach out to slash at any wild Jashinists grabbing expectantly at her throat. It was the perfect,_ safest_ arrangement.

Her mind wandered aimlessly and soon Akane found herself quite bored. She couldn't indulge in her usual calming habit- counting the endless trees in the dark of the woods was too bold an ambition even for her. And if she couldn't get the maniacal psycho's head on a platter again, which would very, _very_ much make her happy, she would have to settle for the next best thing to keep herself occupied.

"How about you give me your coat?"

"Hell no."

"And why is that, may I ask?"

"Gee, I dunno. Maybe because _I'm kinda wearing_ _it_ right now," Hidan rolled his eyes, "Is she retarded or what?"

Akane, putting her hand on her heart, puffed at him, "You are walking around_ bare-chested!_" She paused for effect. "Bare-chested!" she repeated, "You can at least give it to someone who'll wear the half of it decently."

She watched Hidan conjure that endearing I'm-getting-seriously-pissed-off look as he turned to sneer at her, "Yeah? And give me one good reason why I should do that?"

"Because you owe me, for trying to kill me. _Twice._"

That certainly got a cheery "HA!" out of him. And, to be fair, he did get his head chopped off twice for it.

"Because I'm _cold_," she added simply.

_"_Oh really? And here I thought it was your natural climate," Hidan dragged on, his gaze now focused on the nonexistent dirt marring his fingernails. Akane, finding nothing to rebuke, merely twisted her lips wryly, inwardly cursing her current predicament concerning a very annoying, very stubborn Hidan. The very-annoying-and-very-stubborn Hidan, completely childishly, gave her a triumphant grin.

"Give her the damn coat, Hidan._"_

...at which Akane all but blinked.

Simultaneously, Hidan's jaw fell open. "...what the... what _the fuck_ Kakuzu?"

"We can't have her getting sick until we deliver her to Ame," the tall man pushed forward without a break in his stride. "Just give it to her."

Was is just her, or did Kakuzu really mutter a '...more nagging than Hidan...' under his breath?

Seriously?

No?

Must have been her imagination then.

In any case, the insulted look on Hidan's face was nothing short of _priceless_. "You can't be seri-"

"It doesn't pay off if she gets hypothermia now and dies. We've invested too much time and effort in her already."

"Yeah, well that's just peachy, but what if _I_ get hypothermia? Don't you fucking care-"

"You'll live."

"That's not the damn point, Kakuzu!" Hidan snarled, "Seriously, you care more if this slut's tucked in nicely than my comfort, and that's starting to piss me off. **I **am your partner, you know, and you could at least—"

"Your point?"

"-_pretend to give a shit_, you insensitive bastard!" Hidan finished with a shriek.

Kakuzu merely shot him a bored look that reeked of _"I'm not in the mood to put up with your bullshit."_

Using the moment to vent some of her own pent-up frustrations with the Jashinist, Akane smiled kindly at him. "As tragic as your tale of woe is, Hidan-san, I'd venture to say that, as a ninja, you're supposed to put your mission's objective as your highest priority. And that so happens to be," she quirked her eyebrows importantly at him, "me."

Oh she was being deliberately snarky, and she knew it. But, truth be told, she couldn't help herself. This manic jackass seemed to bring out the crazy in her. So maybe a more tolerant person would have called him childish. Maybe even funny. But he was a_ fucking psychopathic asshole_, in Akane's opinion, and there was not a euphemism in the world to cover up what a brute he was.

At her words Hidan fixed her with an especially murderous look before he turned to Kakuzu, growling, "Like hell I'll do it. Why don't you strip, you old fag?" His lips quirked then, tauntingly, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we don't really wanna see your ugly ass, but come on, help the girl oukhkkhmmrfff-!_"_

A fountain of blood.

_Chop number three._

Akane only sighed, unconcerned. If this trip continued on like this, she smirked, she _might_ just lose her count...

* * *

"Watch what you say. Keep this up and you'll get yourself killed."

Akane looked up at the older of the Zombie-duo. He was sitting across from her, adding logs to the fire while Hidan was gone to scout. They were sharing a moment of silence when the usually taciturn Waterfall ninja addressed her. From her spot tucked into Hidan's thick coat, Akane smiled encouragingly at him. "It's alright, Kakuzu-san. I know your power exceeds that of your partner. I'm positive he can't do a thing to me with you around."

Kakuzu looked at her quietly for a while. His emerald eyes acquired an odd gleam to them in the shimmering firelight, his stare as scorching as ever.

"Who says it'll be Hidan who kills you?"

* * *

She had given these people too little credit.

Realizing that she was maybe the only person in the world stupid enough to do something like that, Akane shuddered within herself: she would not make the same mistake again.

Her self-confidence had crumbled away so unbearably easily, as the veiled threat repeated itself ominously in her head, resonating in a trembling vibe that spread and slowly creeped into her very bones. The sudden acknowledgment of how despicably frail her life was, hanging on the line of someone's mere whim, was enough to make her rethink her options and make her more wary than she had ever been.

The tense, murder-coloured air she felt from Kakuzu. The strained relationship with Hidan that felt like all hell could break loose at any given motion or word... it was like walking on egg-shells. Avoiding any more contact than necessary, Akane tried not to get too close to Kakuzu, which turn out not to be difficult at all considering that the older man seemed to be doing the same with enough efficiency for them both. Only now the soothsayer knew it was so he wouldn't come into the temptation of strangling her with his own bare hands.

Taking everything into consideration, she could hardly believe she had lived through this much. Now, she couldn't even fall asleep in their presence unless she was completely and utterly exhausted and her sleeping spot was at a couple of yards away from the ninjas. She woke up more tired than when she went to sleep, and the sight of Hidan pissing on the tree nearest to her head first thing in the morning was enough to send her over the edge.

Only three days. And Akane could hardly bear the sight of him.

They would stand there for a long moment, staring each other down like lone wolves. The morning standoff was an important part of their shared morning routine. Both Hidan and Akane would stand in a way that suggested that they were important in their own right, and clearly unaffected by the other. Then, they would proceed to communicate with nothing but the power of their stares, sending the message that the other was beneath contempt, clearly worthless, and altogether a waste of time. Following that, they would turn away from each other in a manner that was pointedly dismissive and in no way a retreat, and get on with whatever business they had at hand: radiating passive-aggresion 24/7 in Akane's, and bouts of bitching every half an hour precisely, in Hidan's case.

All Akane could do was roll her eyes constantly at him. _Oh woe his life, oh woe is me, yadda yadda yadda, give me a __**break **__already__..._

"I really need a break," Hidan was on the eighth tirade of the morning, "A _real_ break. Fuck, I could just use a chair. Is that too much to ask? You know when was the last time my ass felt a chair? That shithole of a village, eeerm, Lighting country. Like a month ago."

Kakuzu make an uh-hum sound. He so totally didn't give a fuck.

But Hidan liked to whine, recreationally, and so he did, "I can't stand this, seriously, can you? Being a fucking babysitter to a skank. You know what we need, right: some relaxation, some good old fighting, what do you say to that? _C'mon,_ Jashin-sama's pissed at me, I can feel it, I'm at least five sacrifices behind!"

"Then hurry it up. The sooner we deliver this one, the sooner we can get back to hunting the Jinchuuriki."

"Who're y' kidding? The sooner you can drag me off to another damn bounty-hunt, you mean," Hidan accused, rolling his eyes.

Kakuzu didn't reply. When Hidan was right, Hidan was right.

"What I'm saying Kakuzu," but obviously he wasn't about to give up, "is that this next village's the last chance we'll get to sleep on a fucking mattress for the next three days. Think of it as an early vacation. Jashin knows we need one," his eyes glanced in Akane's direction, who easily pretended not to notice.

"You'll just keep bitching about it until this damn trip is over if we don't."

It was more of a statement than a question, but Hidan replied with an evil grin all the same.

"Oh, I _promise._"

After being pursued by a tracking team, walking with little to no water and food for miles, sneaking their way over the border, this was the first time Akane saw Kakuzu actually hesitate. The prospect of Hidan bitching for the next 72 hours must have been a thought too terrifying to bear (oh and she agreed, absolutely she did), because Kakuzu made up his mind after only a fraction of a minute, "If we do, we keep a low profile. No fighting. We get the cheapest room and we're out before sunrise. Nobody leaves without my notice. Is that clear?"

"Got it, got it,_ relax,_ Kakuzu," the Jashinist stretched his arms high above his head, "Besides, I think some money-spending will do you good- y'know, like therapy."

Good thing Hidan managed to avoid Kakuzu fist, otherwise they'd be making another break to collect all his teeth.

Probably for the first time, Akane had to say she agreed with the asshole. She hadn't taken off her clothes for more than three whole days and nights, and her body was all knotted up from traveling and sleeping on the rock-hard ground last night.

After all, they would be crossing the border into Grass country soon, and from that point on it was more or less an easy ride.

* * *

**Translation: Omnia mea mecum porto- ****All that**** I own, I carry with me.**

**(The story behind this one: When the enemy had captured the homeland of a famous sage Bias, while others were fleeing in such a way as to carry many of their possessions with them, and he was told by someone to do likewise, all the sage said was, "I am already carrying all my things with me." Indicating his hatred for the material world, and that the only thing a man needs is his own mind and knowledge; a bit of a double, ironic meaning here on my part, because what he also meant by 'all my things' was virtue, prudence, justice, honour, while Akane is, well...)**

**Translations for Hidan's insults (_pechapai, yariman)_ you'll have to Google yourself. ;)**

* * *

**Announcement: Many thanks to the wonderful 'sora kazega' and 'Ekun-Ash' for drawing fanart for TpoL, like a gazillion years ago, but I'm only now getting the chance to thank them publicly and commend them for their work. Thank you once more, you amazing people you. The links are posted on my profile page, so those of you who have a dA account should feel free to drop them a nice comment or two.**

* * *

**A/N: Warm greetings to you good people waiting out there for this story to get back on track, and welcome aboard to you 50+ new people who have only started reading this story during the past year. My writing may be a bit rusty, but I do hope this chapter isn't too awful and is to your liking. I won't take up more of your time or what space I have here to write down all the reasons why I haven't updated for so long, but whoever's interested, I'll be writing a sort of 'formal apology' to you guys, again, on my profile page. ;D That's where all the info is.**

**One thing I'd like to ask you guys is: have you ever heard some song that made you think of 'The Price of Living' in any way? I'm thinking of making a make-shift soundtrack for the story, you see, and putting it up on my profile, so if any of you know a song that somehow goes along with this story or its characters, please do share.**

**Please review and keep me motivated for the next update. :)**


	33. Vestigia terrent

**Chapter thirty-three:**

**Vestigia terrent**

**A/N: This chapter was supposed to be up a lot sooner, but I faced some updating problems (namely, no Internet). Thanks to all of you who have reviewed, favourited or just followed TPoL so far, it is more than appreciated. It just occurred to me that this story has got much more readers than I ever thought it would, and for that I can't thank you enough. I'm truly honoured. Thank you.**

* * *

After months locked in one cell or another, Akane found herself somewhat disappointed that she wouldn't get to see more of Waterfall country itself. They did pass many of the fast-flowing gulches that supplied the dull, near-omnipresent roar of distant falls. But Kakuzu wasn't much for sightseeing, and he seemed to be leading them to Grass along the least-traveled roads in the country, giving the Hidden Village a wide berth in the process.

The climate was much more welcoming here than the north of the Fire country they had come from. Tree-lined shadows flitted at the edges of her sight and she could smell the damp earth mixed with the musky scent of silt and algae that permeates all wetlands. Birdcalls rang high in the top branches, pleasantly filling the silence. Soon the road began to branch off onto farm lanes and footpaths to the doors of sporadic hovels, until eventually the road smoothed out into paving and the outer edge of a market could be seen. And there were people, more people than Akane had expected from such a small settlement.

As they approached the town further, Akane soon began to notice the white ribbons wrapped around the tree branches and ceramic bowls strategically sorted along the streets, leading up to what appeared to be the town's main square. Upon initial befuddlement at such a sight, realization dawned on her.

The Rice festival_. Of course._

It was one of the oldest festivities, celebrated annually throughout the region, or as far as she was aware. Akane remembered the folks of agricultural Futari being especially fond of it. Makoto-obaasama had taught her how the rice is soaked in water and placed outside at the doorstep for the night- that way the spirits of nature would bless the house, not only with fertile harvest for the year, but also with sake, welfare and luck, which the rice symbolized as well.

"Great, some pagan shit is going on around here," Hidan commented distastefully, earning a sharp look from a woman passing with her child. "We couldn't have picked a better time or _what_..."

"This was your idea," Kakuzu said calmly, giving Akane a warning look to pick up her pace when she fell back to look at the practicing dancers, "And for once, it wasn't actually such a bad one."

Hidan did not seem convinced. "Yeah? How's the fact that we're surrounded by _heathens_ classified as a good idea exactly?"

The ex-Waterfall nin took off his crossed forehead protector and motioned for Hidan to do the same, "There will be too many people attending for us to stand out."

That was true, Akane thought: two highly intimidating men, one of them completely bare-chested, the other covered from head to toe, trailed by skinny girl with a cloak much too big on her were an eccentric sight bound to raise eyebrows, even if the civilians didn't even know the significance of the red-and-black pattern. But nobody gave them notice as they made their way down the street, weaving through crowds in varying states of festive costume, all too busy in making the necessary preparations for the night to spare them a glance.

Akane was secretly thrilled, in a way she hadn't felt for a long while. She was so excited she could barely hold a thought in her head- she found herself itching to take a look around, fuse with these unfamiliar faces, spend the evening wandering between the stalls. Small groups of teenagers were already gathering around the set up ones selling rice cakes and sweetened bread rolls. "Sorry, coming through!" two girls ran past her, giggling, each holding a skewer with glinting rosy dango.

A warm, salty smell of fried fish filled the air. Akane licked her lips absently.

Before she could feel the excitement of the pending festival more explicitly, she was already dragged away by her collar from myriad of colours and smells as they took a sudden turn into an alleyway that cut to the main street, and then went further up into the crisscross streets of the town. It was quieter here, the roads barren and houses leaning heavily one onto the other. They were an unkempt and ugly looking bunch, some barely looking as if they even had life inside- only the sway of drying lingerie hanging on the nearby poles told otherwise.

The three of them went down the street once, Kakuzu focusing intently on the few houses with the sign offering accommodations on them, before he stopped near the end of the street, and then made them circle in the other direction once more.

"Here," he finally pointed.

Akane looked up at the dirty brick building. Her nose wrinkled. _Of course. _Kakuzu would pick the biggest wreck amongst the lot.

Surprisingly, Hidan made no comment to Kakuzu's choice (_right,_ since it probably wasn't the worst deal he had gotten with the old miser) but he went right in, pushing the door open almost violently; not wanting to be left behind alone with Kakuzu, Akane scurried after him, the man in question following close behind.

The interior of the building left much to be desired as well, but Akane waited incredibly patiently as her two co-travelers went up to the innkeeper, throwing her a quick "Stay put" as they did. The soothsayer frowned, feeling like a dog tied to a lamppost, but said nothing. She briefly debated leaving in the direction of those good-natured, laughing voices coming from what appeared to be the guests' main lounge, and nestle in the first cozy armchair she laid her eyes on, just to spite them, but instead settled for watching the innkeeper's uneasy smile beneath his tiny mustache and how the muscles on his face twitched at the sight of his new guests. Hidan and Kakuzu scared the shit out of him, that much was obvious.

Another few quick words, a rusty key exchanging hands, and Akane was climbing up the creaky stairs behind the Zombie-duo and then towards the room at the very end of the hallway. The key failed to open the door the first two attempts, after which Hidan got fed up and slammed it with an elbow. The door dropped inwards, hinges and all, and landed with a _thunk_ and a puff of dust.

The room was dark and smelled faintly musty. The window was blocked off with slatted shutters that cast long strips of light across the floor and the back wall, revealing dust that swirled thick in the air. Dead insects littered the windowsill. A look down brought to attention unidentifiable stains speckled around the carpet.

It was, plainly speaking, a complete dump if Akane ever saw one. Even her modest little room back in the poor Futari was extravagant compared to this.

With no further ado, Hidan dropped face down onto the nearest bed.

Akane wouldn't call it making herself comfortable, but she slipped the canteen from her shoulder and set it on the third extra bed, on the opposite of the other two, hanging Hidan's half-ripped cloak on the rail. The moment she sat herself on it, the limp mattress produced a dangerously loud screech. Something would break that night, she could tell: either her spine, or the unfortunate piece of furniture. Both had seen better days.

Kakuzu had picked up the door and pushed it back to its place with a single hand, clipping it to its hinges. Probably so he wouldn't have to pay for the repairs, was Akane's suspicion. The two of them didn't speak amongst themselves and, quite honestly, Akane had no wish to.

She jerked with a start when a grating noise broke the momentary silence of the room. Akane followed the sound to Hidan's bed. Was he... was he _snoring_? She looked over his steadily rising and falling back, eyebrows-raised. The asshole was asleep already? She hadn't gotten the impression that he was that tired at all, but it sure explained the lack of complaints.

Just a minute later Kakuzu followed Hidan's lead and took the bed beside him, without offering so much as word of instruction. His meaning of the word 'vacation' apparently didn't include any festivities either.

Obviously, the Akatsuki duo wasn't going to give her anything to do with herself until they'd had their beauty sleep, but no matter how heavy her bones felt, Akane couldn't make herself do the same. The texture of the thick grubby bed coverings reminded her too much of something: it may have been the carpet in her room, or a tapestry in her best friend's house, or even the blanket in the Sound, but she could not place it. Her memories were buried in the backyard of her mind, intentionally, and Akane was not eager to fetch a shovel.

Agitated by the brush of nostalgia, she rose from the shrieking bed to make a circle around their room, pacing like a nervous bird left and right-

"Sit still."

So much for that.

Kakuzu glared at her over his shoulder for a moment, before he turned on his side again, back to her. Neither of the two ninjas were concerned about her doing something as ridiculous as attacking them in their sleep. Not that _that_ would do anything. It was a tempting idea though.

Containing a grumble, Akane acquiesced and pulled back to sit by the window, puffing her cheeks up and blowing the dead flies and moths so she could prop herself up on the windowsill. For a few moments of complete silence of the mind, she just sat enjoying the feel of the warm, sunlit stripes on the floor under her bare feet and the cooling breeze that passed though the shutters on her neck.

They didn't really tell her to_ stay_ in the room, Akane thought, hopefully looking out of the window through the cracks. Her face fell then, because _of course_ there wasn't even the need for an explicit order. It was something that went without saying in her situation. She didn't want to think of the consequences if they suddenly woke up and found that she had wandered off by herself. She would never hear the end of it from Hidan, and Kakuzu's reaction might even prove to be a bit more hazardous this time around.

But there were people out there, normal, trustful, _sane _people, civilians like her who didn't talk about conspiracies and loyalties, weapons and jutsus, there was _fun,_ pointless conversation about _anything_ and _nothing_ at all, pretty ceremonial yukatas, delicious food, long cobblestone streets~

_Well,_ Akane thought disappointedly, maybe she'd at least get to see the fireworks from here, if she was lucky.

There was no stopping the sudden stream of thoughts that washed over her in a flow of old accusations and bitter disappointments.

Why was the simple act of getting out in the street so far out of reach for her? Why were these little, littlest of pleasures so forbidden to her, all these everyday things, chatting up strangers, buying cheap sweets and trinkets with pocket money, enjoying the sway of music, the thrill of street performances, the hidden flattering looks boys would sometimes give her and her friends when they dressed up... All those_ simple_ things... How could she have taken it all for granted? Not for the first time that week, Akane found herself feeling like the loneliest soul in this entire world.

She looked over at the two men in their respective beds, both still and relaxed, and felt so unbearably out of place that it took all of her self-preservation to stay put then and there. If watching Hidan and Kakuzu sleep was the absolute most interesting thing she could do- and no, it wasn't creepy at aaaall- she'd much rather go to sleep herself as to recharge her batteries. But deep healthy sleep came to her so rarely these days; she was always either twitchingly alert or abruptly lapsed into blank unconsciousness.

_No rest for the wicked my foot, _she snorted bitterly, jealous of Hidan as he hogged his pillow, snuggling into it. The_ priss._

_They _shouldn't sleep. Akane could bet her life on that they had done enough gruesome things during their lucrative careers that would keep any person with _an actual conscience_ awake for the rest of his life. And yet, they seemed so... perfectly _normal _this way, so oddly at peace,_ harmless,_ **human**_**.**_It wasn't right. It made her feel awkward, as if she was seeing something that she shouldn't be seeing, like that first time when she had barged in on Orochimaru having breakfast, something that so didn't fit with her mind's picture of the monsters she knew them to be. It was simply incomprehensible.

In the moments when she felt tired and poisoned by the world in which, by a bad coincidence, she lived and only miraculously stayed alive, when her sights grew dim and direction turned uncertain, Akane imagined her house in front of her and tried to recall as many details about it as she could; the fading memory cured her every pain and nullified every suffering. An old trick of a tired mind. That way, a couple of times a day, using every calm in the life around her, every pause in a conversation, every blackout of mind, the young girl would step up further into her house, slip down its corridors or putter around the terrace with her mother's flowers, adoring the place which she should have never left in the first place.

Akane spent the next few hours doing nothing but mindlessly staring out of the window over the roofs and imagining, until the sun softened and the voices on the outside became more easily discernible in the late afternoon hush. Hidan began to stir and she knew they would be waking up soon.

"What the hell are you looking at?"

Oh. He was already awake. Joy.

"Nothing," she quickly said.

Hidan cracked a purple eye open, looking at her challengingly. "No, no, tell me, c'mon now. I'll bite."

"Nothing. Just thought I heard you waking..." Akane braced herself for the usual spar, "...since you _finally_ stopped snoring."

The Jashinist peered at her through tired, heavy-lidded eyes, before he scowled, "Fucking liar. I don't snore."

Akane just gave him _a long_ look.

"Fuck off already. I don't."

At least fifty snarky remarks crossed Akane's mind, _"You keep telling that to yourself," "Whatever helps you sleep at night, oh, but keeps everyone else awake"_ but she decided to shelve them for now. She merely huffed in retribution, combing her fingers through her hair, and cringed as she did so- her scalp was all spongy and puffs of dandruff fell into her lap. Making up her mind, she hopped down from the windowsill and made her way to the bathroom-

When a huge muscled hand slammed against the ram in front of her, blocking her path.

"First to the shower," Hidan declared, smugly.

Akane glared up at him. "Hey, I was just about to-"

"You had your chance during the time you spent watching me sleep," the Jashinist flipped her off, pushing her out of his way so roughly she stumbled on her feet, "...freak."

This time Akane couldn't hold back with voicing her bewilderment, smiling sarcastically, "You know that's a funny thing to say, since I'm obviously_ not _the main freakshow attraction here. Oh but please,_ do_ continue to humour me."

"You little-" Hidan had just opened his mouth for another foul retort when the sharp creak of the bed grabbed both of their attention. Kakuzu was stretching, with all his bones popping as he did, and fixed them with a glaring look that read _I can't believe you two morons are at it again. _Obviously, he had not planned on getting involved unless he really needed to, and_ that_ moment unfortunately came very quickly, per usual.

Hidan, in return, positively beamed at his partner. "Hey, Kakuzu, that favour you owe me? How about_ sewing this bitch's mouth shut!"_

"I don't owe you any favours. If the both of you don't shut up this moment, I swear I'll sew you together."

… simultaneously, Akane and Hidan cringed.

There was no joking with Kakuzu's tone.

"... yeah, whatever," Hidan regained his perkiness with a single puff, "You go then, as if I care anymore. _Elderly_ first."

Apparently, that was completely fine with Kakuzu. Lazily, he got out of the bed, threw them the last _I'll be back_ look, and locked himself in the bathroom.

Akane didn't speak a word more to Hidan, and Hidan didn't say a word to her back. It was better that way, for both their sakes, it went unsaid. They sat one on the opposite of the other, staring in random directions, intent on ignoring each other. Hidan amused himself with one thousand different poses he tried to shift himself into, his bed's each creak grating _endlessly_ on Akane's nerves, and she had a sinking feeling he was doing it on purpose just to rile her up. To her credit, Akane didn't move an inch from her spot at the edge of her mattress the whole time.

The silent communication between them, however, went on.

_I hate you._ Akane was the first to throw a green-eyed glare.

Hidan's was equally intense. _I hate you more._

_No I hate__ you__ more._ She was persistent.

Hidan scowled. _Why don't you try saying it to my face?_

Akane measured him up with another cold stare, now even somewhat amused. _But clearly, _said the stare, _you're too insignificant for me to bother._

When the door to the bathroom opened with wisps of steam rising from inside, Hidan jumped to his feet with an exasperated "Finally!" even though Kakuzu had only been in for about ten minutes, and rushed right in, smashing the door shut behind him as a final _Fuck you_. Kakuzu rolled his eyes and, without paying Akane a glance, went to the bed he had chosen as his.

"Just what's the matter with him?" she asked casually, not actually caring for an answer, so it came as a bit of a surprise to her when Kakuzu decided to respond.

"Fire's bright climate strained his eyes. Gets him more annoying than he already is," it fully sounded like Kakuzu just wanted to complain for a change, "Hidan's naturally disposed for bitching. Even when he's not rolling his eyes, his iris does it for him."

_Like nystagmus? _The Latin word occurred to her out of the blue._ And... light-sensitivity, he says?_ Two and two put together, Akane thought about the possibility of Hidan being an actual albino. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense to her. So this whole trip when Hidan kept frustrating her... it was all because he was feeling nervous? His constant bitching throughout the entire Land of Fire was just to make himself feel better as to hide how much direct sunlight bothered his eyesight? Not that he was less of an ass now, hell no, but at least Akane could find some sense in his obnoxious behaviour.

Deciding not to dwell too much about it, Akane looked at Kakuzu unabashedly now, the black undershirt stretching across his broad chest and the black stitches pulling together every inch of his arms' skin. Once more she found herself staring for longer than she probably should have, but she couldn't help it- Kakuzu was a strange sight without the head covering, with damp brown hair hanging down to his shoulders; there were crosses in black thread at the edges of his mouth, she noted. Then he turned his back to her and she flinched at the white masked faces leering at her; she was reminded that two of them were now broken, the porcelain pieces crumbling to the floor in tiny bits.

Akane cleared her throat a bit. "Sorry for the masks," she started, carefully trying to appease whatever irritation he might still harbour towards her. It wouldn't do having a tense relationship with both Akatsuki members if she thought to reach the Rain in one piece.

Kakuzu only gave a grunt, leaving her hanging for a proper response. Was it an_ Alright _or a _Whatever_ or _As if I believe that, bitch _sort of grumble? And she had thought she had gotten better at this while practicing on Sasuke...

"It was nothing personal," she tried again, her tone smoother, more respectful, "I just..."

She paused for a moment, the images of her lost past still fresh behind her eyes. Her sentiment softened against her. "I just want to go _home._.." she admitted in a whisper.

Akane looked up at Kakuzu again, this time a small, honest smile on her lips, "And you... well, here you are, among your own countrymen, after all that time. I'm sure you can relate. I'm sure that, if you could, you'd do the exact same..."

Kakuzu's face slowly morphed: from confusion to blankness, and then to acrimony in an instant, and the next moment he looked admittedly quite threatening.

Akane's entire world rocked, blurred, shifted, so fast that for a moment she thought the floor had dropped several feet. Her stomach soared, breath pushed out of her in a yelp as something squeezed, soft and strong as hair about her middle, her arms and legs, abruptly tightening, her muscles giving a jerk at the sharp sting of cords cutting into her flesh. Her own bones and joints ground together as she thrashed in midair.

_Y-You can't do this!_ she tried to shout, but it was useless, the ropes had already reached her throat, and she began choking. Akane tried to grab at her neck, her eyes flashing black, desperate to breathe, squirming in panic, _nononon**ononNO** _but her arms were stuck beside her body, tangled in cords and-

"The fuck Kakuzu! I thought you said we needed her!"

The cords rasped against her skin as they withdrew, quicker than they'd bound her, and Akane crashed to the ground, abruptly very aware of her own skeleton.

She doubled over and spat, a mouthful of blood and saliva splattering in between her arms. Some ended up getting caught in her hair. It felt as if her throat had been squeezed out- even without touching it she could feel the deep cuts marring her skin, itching with stinging pain.

Akane couldn't believe it was her thinking it but _thank_**God**_forHidan!_

"I can't fucking believe this, I mean, _what_ a hypocrite! I see what you did there- all that 'stop that Hidan' and 'we need her Hidan' and other boohoo bullshit was just so you could kill the bitch yourself! And what about _my_ rituals, eh? What about them?! Talk about _selfish_, you greedy son of a-"

"You," Kakuzu shot a commanding look at Akane, still sprawled on the floor in unadulterated shock, "_Get out of my sight."_

Akane didn't need to be told twice. She picked herself up at once, on all four shaky hands and feet, and rushed headlong into the bathroom, locking the door behind her as soon as her back safely leaned against its surface.

* * *

Blood dried around her lips and on her chin.

_Breathe..._

She willed herself to think of her old personal mantra, and not of the warm blood still trickling down her wrists as she kept clutching at her throat, _Breathe... As long as you have breath in you, you are alright. You are alright. You are al..._

Akane hesitated as she slowly released her aching neck, putting her hand on her stomach instead. _There_, she thought, that would help her do the exercise Sakura had used on her the first time she had had a panic attack during her travel with Team Kakashi. _Breathe from the stomach. Don't move your shoulders, the tender medic had said, whatever you do, just continue breathing._

Her diaphragm reacted accordingly, she felt, as something softened inside of her and settled down where it didn't hurt to breathe anymore. Akane had no idea what **the fuck **had just happened, but clearly, she had said something _very wrong._ Something about Kakuzu and his Waterfall village, and his past, that had set him off for some reason she couldn't for the world remember. Oh why, why, **why** didn't she remember it?

Her head swimming, Akane untangled herself from her gown and dragged herself to the shower, jabbing the tap up. Freezing-cold rush of water drenched her scalp in an instant, appeasing the building up panic inside of her. The two had left her no warm water whatsoever. The problem seemed so trite. The sort of thing that people would argue over on vacation. But a luxury she couldn't even hope would be allowed to her.

After all, what was she even expecting? Why would she even continue having _any_ expectations anymore, when nothing was ever how she had imagined it? These monstrous people... her plans... _herself._.. everything was warped, strange and far too grave, and she was supposed to get her damn head up and live with it!

She didn't agree to it. She didn't think she ever would.

Still, she would have to survive. For as long as it took. No matter the price.

_No matter the price, _Akane reaffirmed the thought determinedly.

But truth was, Akane was only nineteen years old and she was _tired_. So very, horribly tired. Everything took effort now, even the very thought of standing up... so Akane didn't bother, continuing to sit in the corner of the shower, knees pulled up to her chest, the cold raining over her back. She didn't know how long she sat like that on the freezing tiles, thinking about nothing, simply letting the water wash away the tension from her muscles and out of her mind. It could have easily been anywhere between fifteen minutes and an hour.

When she finally forced herself to a stand, her body went on autopilot- dressing, blowdrying her hair with a small drier until it was semi-damp before it broke with a cough, combing her hair down with her fingers and finally assessing the situation in the cracked mirror.

Ugly thin cuts circling her neck, on the sides of her shoulders, flakes of blood crumbling from them. A beaten-up look in her eyes. She looked as dead as ever.

Akane took one large breath and went back into the room.

Thankfully, but no less surprisingly, the room was empty now. Hidan and Kakuzu must have gone down to the lounge, she realized. They probably already got some food, leaving only the bones for her, her mind added cynically. Of course they wouldn't wait up on her.

Akane looked around the place with distaste once more, noting the spiderwebs veiling the corners of the ceiling and brown freckles of her own blood on the carpet, before she went to the door and tried turning its handle. The door clicked open, confirming her previous analysis- she was free to join them downstairs. That was a relief. Akane didn't think she could have taken it if she had found herself locked up in a room once more...

Down the rickety stairs, she passed the now-empty counter where the innkeeper had initially greeted them, and walked in the direction of the room where she had previously heard the loud chatter of guests upon their entrance. As she stepped into the lounge-

* * *

There were bodies.

Bloated, blue and gray, their faces and limbs coated with freshly spilled blood.

More quickly than she thought herself capable, Akane jerked back behind the wall, managing to crack her head in the process. She cringed, biting her teeth together hard to keep from making a sound, and forcing herself to remain motionless for several heavy beats of her heart. _I didn't... just see that. Nobody saw me there. I didn't see anyon-_

She almost screamed when somebody grabbed her by her shoulders.

"It's just the girl. We got the last of them."

_Kakuzu._

Akane stared at his glimmering dark green eyes, still horrified, even as he let go of her. She immediately took a few steps back to put some distance between them. He merely watched her doing so for a moment before he jerked his head towards the room, "Get in."

She did as instructed, biting her lip. This time she had the time to take in the whole grotesque picture. In the corner of the room the innkeeper and a frizzy looking woman stood huddled together like frightened forest animals. The scattered corpses grew no less horrifying on second glance and did nothing to still Akane's thrashing face wrinkled in disgust as a foul, metallic odour assaulted her nose. _One, two, three, four, _**_my God._.**.

One would think that having spent months around people of Orochimaru or Kabuto's caliber the young girl would have been more used to being in company of people so clearly insane, but the truth was that she wasn't. She didn't think she would ever be. Because Akane still remembered her world. That cozy place in her room where she had read about terrible crimes, even with a strange sort of morbid excitement, yes, but it had all seemed so far away, because she was sheltered, so, so sheltered and away from it all. It was her home, school, concert halls, martial arts' club, friend's house, all her life had consisted of. The worst things people in her surroundings did could be downright nasty- they would lie, cheat, gossip, cuss, betray, get into fights, sometimes even steal... but nothing was never like this. Never, **never** like Akane, this was... it was... just... as unnatural as it was hideous.

"...why did you do this?" she questioned in a low voice, throat suddenly clenched; she was surprised that she could speak at all, "I thought we were supposed to be inconspicuous. I thought-"

"There was no point in hiding. They already knew we were here."

… Akane sucked in a breath at the implication.

"These men... they were ninja?" she asked, her question coming out in a hushed half-whisper. _Were they from Konoha...?_ The uninvited thought induced a sudden pang of guilt. Akane turned around herself quickly, searching the floor with her eyes for any sign of a headband-

"_Sound,_" splattering blood in all directions, Hidan jerked his hand to remove the scythe from a corpse's rib-cage; a low wheezing noise came out of its lungs as they inflated. The Jashinist smirked at her, "Looks like _somebody_'s being missed, ey?"

Akane didn't reply, too appalled to even speak.

_**HE'S HERE**-OhGod-he knows- he knows we—ohGodheis-!_ Panic shot up her spine and she turned around, again and again, her body twitching in a mixture of reactions, to hide, to run, to attack, to _find-_

"Orochimaru didn't know we would be here," Kakuzu said as if reading her mind, calmly browsing through a blood-soaked wallet. "These people obviously didn't come prepared- they reacted on sight, unorganized, when they saw us. They didn't even get to see that she is with the organization." He took out several paper bills, dropping the emptied wallet to the ground beside its dead owner. "There won't be any problems with them from now on. Orochimaru will not send anyone after us."

_Was it really just an accident? _It seemed so, even though Akane found it hard to acknowledge it as such, still shaking with the residual paranoid adrenaline rush. What would have happened if she had entered the lounge this morning before Hidan and Kakuzu had gotten there? Would these people have recognized her, grabbed her and made a run for the Sound? Very probably. Even so, could they have outrun the ninjas of the Akatsuki? No, not likely. She was safe- as safe as one could get, considering the company she was keeping these days.

Akane looked around herself with more calm this time, trying to place these bloodstained foreheads, disfigured jaws, snapped necks. She remembered gray patterned masks with cruel and lascivious eyes, as they followed her down the dark underground hallways and laughed at her imprisonment, her futile sacrifice, her ignorance. They all knew that Hana was already long gone. They were all in on it. Every single of these men, Akane thought darkly, deserved to die.

"Hey, looks like we got a live one over here," Hidan's delighted voice snapped her out of that thought and made her rethink it almost instantly. Akane looked over to the Jashinist, currently leaning over a sprawled body. At his feet, a Sound ninja's hands were stabbed to the ground by kunai through his palms; half of his left leg was hacked off... but he was still_ rasping to breathe._

Hidan looked over his work with a pleased smile. "Unlucky fucker. Look what you do to yourself by hanging onto your pathetic life," he shook his head in feigned sympathy, his smile the shape of his scythe. "I mean, damn, that must hurt pretty fucking bad."

The man's eyes rolled up in his skull. His lips, shiny with drool twitched wordlessly.

"What was that?"

Red bubbles foamed on the ninja's lips as if he were trying to speak, his body starting to shake uncontrollably.

"I hate it when people don't answer me, seriously," Hidan huffed, "I asked-"

In a second he was crushing him, twisting the embedded kunai further into the man's ripped palm until something _(the bone, the wood beneath?)_ cracked, and then wrenching it out with a cackle, "What. did. you. _Say?!_" the innkeeper's wife sobbing loudly in the corner as the injured man howled with an ear-shattering scream-

"**Stop it! **Stop it, can't you see he's already half-dead!" Akane yelled, unable to withstand the brutality anymore. Some old firmness crept back into her voice, "Just get it done with and let's get out of here."

Hidan stood to his feet, watching as the man choked on his own bloody spittle. He was mulling it over.

"Nah. I think I'll leave this one like this."

He picked up his scythe in his other hand, still playing with the kunai blood-drenched to the hilt in his left. "Pathetic piece of shit, can't even die properly. Not even worth using him for my ritual, I swear."

"You-Well you can't just leave him like this! He's going to be... to be..." Akane's eyes widened at understanding his intentions. _Slowly bleeding to death._ She couldn't even get it past her lips.

Hidan looked over to her, grinning, "Yeah, sure I can. It'll send a pretty nice message, don't ya think?"

"That's," Akane choked out, "_torture_. Finish what you started, just finish him off already! Can't you find just a bit of humanity in you to... to..."

This time even Kakuzu chuckled with Hidan, the combined sound of their laughter shooting a wave of anger and embarrassment down her spine. Humanity. Really, what was she _thinking_...

Her stomach dropped, churning with infective fear and disgusted hatred, as bile rose in her throat with a surge of mounting resolve. Determination flashed across her face and Akane ran up to Hidan, snatching the kunai he held lightly in his hand, before she pushed past him furiously, kneeling beside the heavily bleeding Sound ninja. The man's glazed eyes looked up at her blankly as she elevated the knife straight above his heart.

Akane brought her hand down.

* * *

. . .

"She really can't do it, can she?"

The amused snicker snapped some cord in her and vacuumed her back into reality. Akane hadn't moved for over a minute, her hand still clutching the bloody blade above the man's struggling heart. Looking at him. The apology in her eyes, full of shame and resentment towards herself, reflected back at her in man's glassy stare.

Finally, slowly, Akane pulled her hand back, setting the kunai with trembling fingers by her side.

"No," she said quietly, "No, I can't." She stubbornly choked back a sob that came from nowhere. "Just kill him. Hidan-san. Kakuzu-san?"

"Hey, you said it yourself, he'll be dead in an hour or so anyway. What's the rush?"

Kakuzu didn't say a thing, clearly with his partner on this one- neither of them would even consider giving a man a relief from suffering. They relished it, she thought, relished her confusion and panic and _weakness_, and Akane couldn't even bear to turn around and see their laughing faces. She just sat there, back turned to the two merciless men, a steel knife by her thigh, and a shaking body of who might just have been her jailer only half a year ago, but who was now depending on a single swish of her trembling hand to erase his pain and his life. But she couldn't do it.

"Come on. We're leaving."

_(to take a life as to free from suffering...)_

"Are you serious, would you just look at her! Pathetic!" she could hear Hidan's laughter, echoing as if through a tunnel, as all the sounds faded in the background until all she could hear was the deafening silence of her mind. The injured ninja's black eyes stared dumbly at her. His mouth was full to the brim with blood. Why was he still _breathing_ **dammit.**

_(is it really that hard for you?)_

There was a sound of heavy steps approaching until they stopped right beside her, and from her peripheral vision she saw Hidan kneeling next to her. "Ok, listen, I changed my mind, I'm gonna help you out with this one." Their shoulders almost touched and Akane immediately stiffened, "You're just the most pathetic thing I've ever seen, seriously."

He took her hand, almost gently, and slipped the kunai between her fingers. His calluses scraped over her knuckles as he squeezed firmly._ So that is his intention._ Akane could already see him guiding her hand with his to slash across the man's neck with a strange mixture of relief and fear, because it would be** his **hand actually doing the act, not hers, and so it would-

"There," but Hidan did no such thing, standing up as soon as he was sure the kunai didn't fall out of her unfeeling fingers, then going back to stand behind her shoulders. There was a smile in his voice, hard and metallic, like the gleam of light off the knife, honed and sharp and lethal. "Now I'm gonna tell you a little something about this guy and make it a little easier on you, deal?"

Akane's hand sweated around the scratchy bandage wrapped around the handle of the knife, grip chalk-white. What was this? What was Hidan trying to do here? Didn't he have enough of laughing at her? In her confusion, Akane tried to focus on his voice and not on the wheezing breaths of the dying man in front of her. A hot and throbbing sensation pulsed bellow her ribs, stronger and stronger, building up with each quick shallow breath she took until she thought it would make her ribcage crack.

"You listening? Alright. So this rotten, smelly windbag you're feeling sympathy and playing the hero for is a godless, rapist son of a bitch that has a bounty on his head for some shitload of money only Kakuzu is deranged enough to memorize," Hidan said to her, "And he didn't get it for being no saint either."

"You don't get out much, so let me enlighten you," he continued, a grin in his voice, "This guy over here is pretty fucking famous for betraying his village when he led his own team to a death-trap that split their heads up like a bunch of watermelons- oh, except the girl of the team, who he first decapitated, before getting nasty with her corpse, all the while having a good laugh about it." He gave a loud bark of a laughter as if to further emphasize his point. "SO, then he proceeded to cut them all nicely to pieces as to sent some rotting body parts to his government officials. Like a fucking manifesto or something, I dunno. Fuck politics right? Well then, since he made his point, looks like he joined that snake bastard to take on petty jobs for him." Hidan stopped there, gleeful, as if approaching a punchline, "And get this: _you_ were apparently one of them."

Stone-faced during his macabre story, Akane now realized that her knife had unconsciously moved to the edge of the Sound ninja's neck. The blade pressed a cold, bright indent against the bruised flesh. Her brows furrowed and her chin trembled for a moment. She licked her lips, "W-What... what are you talking about?"

"Isn't it fucking obvious?" Hidan said to her confidently, "This is the creep that watched over you when you were in the Sound base."

… Akane's blood ran cold.

"Was just bragging to his buddies over here how he was one of the guards handpicked by Orochimaru to keep you nice and to his heel." Hidan's voice boomed in her ears with the sudden onrush of burning blood, "Bragged he fucked you too, but yeah, I'm sure that's more or less a total li- "

Akane screamed out and jerked her hand and slit a throat with a long wet blade.

Again

and_ again_

and **_again._**

It was over so quickly, so startlingly quickly, that Akane continued to slice until the realization etched into her brain.

The man was long dead.

_(...you killed him)_

Blood streamed down her hand, like warm water. And Akane couldn't look away from it, eyes glassed over, she just c_ouldn't look away._ She was a murderer.

The knife fell out of her hand.

She was a...

"I'm... _not**.**_..."

_(you)_

The trembling came then.

Akane jumped to her feet as if burned, spun, meeting eyes that appraised, assessed, and didn't accuse. Choking on the reek of blood. It was too quick. _It happened too quick!_

A crack in her voice. "I-I..."

_**(killed)**_

The two criminals of the Akatsuki watched her silently.

"You know I made most of that stuff up, right?"

Hidan grinned at her then, her name resonating in the room of corpses like a last obscenity.

"Welcome to the club... _Akane._"

_(and you.__**liked.**__ it.)_

* * *

Her feet carried her, screaming to run away, to nullify what had happened, what had _she _done...

Her mind. Splattering all over the inner walls of her skull.

As if there wasn't a single thought left in her, as if all her senses were numb from a stroke-

Yet oddly enough, Akane was aware of everything, more sensitive and susceptible to her surroundings than she had ever been. Her ear could catch the tinkling sounds of the night, clear and purified, as if they were bouncing off of glass. She could discern every single sound as they flowed into the joint humming of water, twittering nightbirds, smooth breeze and the quiet swish of the dark.

Alone, far from the inn, and the murder. Run run _run_ into the streets, into the night, don't turn back, _just run. _She was surprised neither of the two men had come after her yet.

Here, on the outside, there were soft voices and hums, light and shapes. And Akane listened and watched, uninvolved with the world around her, with neither sorrow nor enjoyment, neither ruining nor improving the picturesque.

Even in this darkness life was going on, she thought, without her partaking, unchanged by her feelings or, rather, the lack of them. And so independent was she, so true, unassimilated into her thoughts about them, like a foreign, unrecognizable thing, like something that simply goes on, happens and exists past everything, vain and futile. She switched off and disconnected, separated from life around her- deeming it meaningless and dispassionate- this world filled with ghosts of the past and imaginary present- all alive, but essentially _soulless._

And she... she was free and impenetrable.

The night was moonlit, fragile and silky, the tombstones on the walls glimmered with warm light, the smashed patches of darkness chattered between the houses. In a reflection of windowglass she passed by, a glimpse revealed a face of a girl with green green eyes and cheeks sprinkled all over with black dots. Her first thought was that it was a trick, speckles of dust and crusted dirt on the old glass painted over her reflection. Akane reached out, moving her fingers over the surface to dispel the illusion- and she only smeared red over it.

What kept staring back at her was a being with glass in its eyes and dripping blood-red hands.

Fear crawled into her; in a splinter of a second, everything had acquired strange dimensions. Akane hadn't known that the world could be distorted so much in a day, an hour, a moment, _a single slash of a blade_, as if some demonic blood had been stirred up in her and nothing could silence it anymore.

Young people moved anxiously around the alleys: one could hear giggling, and distant singing, and whispering, and it seemed that in this night, the whole village was shaking in a fever. The festival raged on in the main street.

She saw these young people, people her age, people who didn't seem to have a care in the world, saw them in couples, heard them in couples, they were behind all the fences, all the gates, behind all the walls, they didn't laugh like on the other days, nor look, nor talk; their voices were muffled, heavy, sultry, the joyous screams and laughs broke out like a thunder in the threatening storm. A memory of a sweet boy, a rebel dreaming of peace, grasped the edges of her consciousness...

Fury came over her, like vertigo, like a fit.

_None of these people give a damn_, she thought feverishly, _the whole village doesn't give a damn, nobody can take this night away from them!_ And Akane thought to herself, thought how their peace **wasn't real,** that _they_ were not real,and that they should all just wither away and **die.**

Tormented by the unrest of broken steps, stalking moonlight, fear brought to life without reason, insecurities and loneliness with which this world was filling her, as if she was walking among the houses set ablaze, as if she was passing by a graveyard of dancing ghosts-!

- _that_ was the moment in which Akane realized that it was her long-numb mind reawakening, starting to transform what she heard and saw into pain, into memories, into unfulfilled wishes. The drained sponge of her brain started to soak in anger-!

**Silence.**

Silence was what she needed, peace, to be free from loathing.

Akane choked on a breath, suddenly tense. Never before had she thought of people and life with such an absurd rage. Where did that wish, that all should die, that nothing should exist anymore, come from? She had known unrests and uproars within herself even before that night, true, but these would come and go, like a temporary lack of consciousness, like a rebellion hushed in blood, like an inexplicable spite directed to the order inside of herself. They were but short tumbles that left no trace.

But _this _night.

This night it seemed as if total bewilderment had crept upon her, that each and every string of connection had broken inside of her... and that she was no longer what she used to be. There were snakes coiling in the dark pit of her stomach, scales sliding against scales, slimy and dry at the same time, making her feel like she was always on the verge of vomiting and if she once started she wouldn't be able to stop until she got them out along with the rest of her. Feeling like she would never be able to stop shaking. Just _what _had happened to her?

It was so clear. The last scattered shards of her, lingering after her escape from the village of Sound, had been ultimately crushed. What she was seeing right now was one of her possible selves- a possibility that could be devastating, if it lasted.

Facing this new self, the first thing Akane had felt was fear, still distant but profound and inevitable, like a certainty that she would pay for this change of her being. Some deity would punish her with the torment of conscience, and she would not have to wait long for it to begin. _Maybe this very night. Maybe just now._

But nothing happened.

She stood in the same spot, heels dug into the muddy path, feeling drained and tired, still warm from the fire that had blazed up inside of . absolutely. _nothing._ No chattering of conscience. No spitting regrets.

Akane stood for a few more moments, lost in herself, before her feet took over, leading her further down the road, stepping away from the glowering orange of the lamplights, urging herself to continue moving along the riverbank. The moon was so bright she could clearly see every single pebble on the path in front of her as if it were daylight. She leaned over the fence of a bridge, throwing her head back towards the heavens, as if challenging them to cut her scheming throat.

Yet the sky was emptied and barren, neither a threat nor a consolation. Akane snapped her head down and gazed at its apathetic reflection in the water: changed and broken and twisted beyond redemption in the murky grays of the river beneath...

* * *

_The loss of faith in human beings is a long and steady process, extending over one thousand such evenings._

_What was there left to say except that the process was finally complete?_

* * *

**Translation: Vestigia terrent - The footprints frighten me. (Horace)**

* * *

**A/N: … in which Akane gets herself sentimental and into an unfavourable predicament by forgetting just one _teeny tiny_ detail from a character's history (namely, that Kakuzu was imprisoned and tortured _by his own village_ after failing to assassinate the First Hokage, thus stealing a forbidden technique in vengeance and ripping the hearts right out of his government's officials to supply for it).**

**More importantly, with this chapter we've reached the turning point, can you tell? The final straw. The point of no return. Interested how the rest of the story goes? Read on, dear ladies and gentlemen. With this we're closing another chapter of the book, and officially starting the long-awaited "Akatsuki arc." You could say that it had started with Hidan and Kakuzu's very appearance, but no- only after witnessing Akane's final act can we now say that it has _really_ begun. Anybody interested in drawing fanart cover page for it? I'll love you forever, I swear. Special thanks to Ninjagirl2211 who drew an illustration of Hidan annoying the hell out of Akane. Much love here.  
**

**Oh and yes, I made Hidan an albino. Well, a sort of albino, some strange kind. He doesn't seem to have a sensitive skin, with him going around flashing those abs at everybody, but his hair and eyes are the appropriate colour for the condition, so I played with that part a bit. With all those unnaturally white-haired people running around, apparently the folk in Narutoverse aren't familiar with it in medical terms, so I'm using my creative license here.**

**I'm curious to see if we can get around 700 reviews with this chapter? Help me out here you guys, will ya? ;)  
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